At first glance, you’d be forgiven for thinking that James – ‘Jamie’ – Dornan, born in Belfast on 1 May 1982, had something of an idyllic childhood. He did grow up in Holywood after all, even if this was a rather genteel suburb in County Down, Northern Ireland, and not the more well-known Hollywood in California.
He enjoyed a privileged upbringing and although Northern Ireland was at the centre of the IRA terrorist campaign that rampaged throughout the 1980s, Jamie knew little of it.
Growing up in a sprawling family home in the well-to-do suburbs, Jamie was the youngest of three in a well-respected family. His father Jim Dornan – a doctor and world-famous obstetrician – and mother Lorna, a ‘beautiful and very glamorous’ nurse, had created a picture-perfect and comfortable home for their children Liesa, Jessica and Jamie, set amongst stunning gardens and protected by impressive gates. The family were also blessed with good friends and an enviable social life, and the children benefitted from outstanding schooling.
Jamie’s parents were proud of their offspring, particularly since five years of infertility at the start of their marriage meant that the pair had spent half a decade worrying about whether they might never be able to create a family of their own. During the years of failed attempts to conceive their first baby, Jim’s job of delivering babies on a near daily basis felt even more poignant.
The situation reached the stage where Lorna became increasingly concerned that it would never happen and so they sought medical advice. ‘I can remember being investigated which was pretty basic all those years ago but I remember hoping that it would be my problem because I could cope with it, I could get my head around it,’ Jamie’s father said of their years of trying, but failing, to start a family.
Luckily, just as the pair were undergoing tests to determine any underlying complications, Lorna unexpectedly fell pregnant with Jamie’s oldest sister Liesa. It was a life-changing moment for both of them – even for Jim, whose professional expertise was in all things relating to babies and new mothers. ‘I felt physically nauseated witnessing the pain of labour suffered by my wife Lorna,’ he said, adding that his helplessness was not eased at being ‘put out of the room’ as per the conventional wisdom of the time. ‘Even though I was an obstetrician I was told to leave the delivery room for my first child; in those days we didn’t have epidurals so it was assisted delivery and sometimes the man wasn’t allowed,’ Jim explained.
A second daughter, Jessica, followed two years later and, four years after that, they welcomed a son into the world, who was named James following a three-generation tradition. It was love at first sight for all involved and Jamie, as he was known, was quite clearly the apple of his father’s eye. ‘Jamie’s one of the nicest people I know […] he is essentially a very good and grounded man. He’s got a great sense of humour too and is sensitive in nature. We are all immensely proud of him,’ Jim once said of his famous son.
Together, they were a secure and powerful unit, since family was everything to both Jim and Lorna, despite their very different upbringings. ‘Every child is a product of their parents,’ Jamie’s father once noted in an interview about his incredible medical career, which spanned over forty years. ‘So we are coloured a lot by what happens in our youth.’
For Jamie, this couldn’t have been a more accurate reflection of who he was; as the schoolboy emerged as a true all-rounder, it was obvious his family had an astonishing influence in shaping every part of his being. He was not only a keen sportsman but also a talented musician and promising actor; additionally, Jamie was kind, considerate and empathic: if someone was upset and having a hard time, the youngster would instantly show kindness. This should come as no surprise as, with so many of his immediate relatives involved in the caring professions, a compassionate nature was instilled in him very early on.
His mother Lorna, in particular, helped to pass on to her young children those very important values, even though her own childhood had been less than idyllic. Like so many women in the 1940s and 1950s who had fallen pregnant when unmarried, Lorna’s biological mother had been forced to give her daughter up for adoption. Fortunately for Lorna, though, unlike thousands of children of her generation, the woman who took her on was a devoted and adoring mother who raised the young girl as her own. ‘In the sixties and in my teens I went out with six different adopted girls, not that I was a philanderer, it was just very common, there were a lot of people out there who were adopted in your class at school,’ Jamie’s father once described. ‘We all know the reason behind it, because a child born out of wedlock was seen as a terrible thing and society did put a lot of pressure on these girls to adopt. One of my sisters was adopted and yes my wife was adopted too,’ he said.
Although Lorna spent much of her life not knowing who her real mother was, she eventually managed to track her down, only to discover that she had a sister, too – and in turn an aunt for Jamie. ‘Lorna was incredibly close to her mother, the woman who reared her. It’s not always a good idea to go and find your real mother, but in Lorna’s case it worked well,’ Jim added.
Professor Dornan, on the other hand, was the middle one of three children, sandwiched between two sisters. He grew up in the confines of ‘the rather non-PC named’ Cripples Institute in Bangor, where his accountant father was manager. Although his parents doted on their children, his upbringing was strict and religious, ‘although non-sectarian I’m proud to say,’ as Jim later recalled.
At school, the future doctor wasn’t a high flyer but ‘kept going’ with his education while being something of a live wire outside the classroom. ‘I did talk an awful lot and I think I have and did have Attention Deficit Disorder because I was always charging about doing one thing or another,’ he recalled.
As many of his best friends lived inside the institution, a job within the caring profession seemed likely from quite early on. ‘I spent my time playing with children with spina bifida or other conditions and later, as a doctor, I found it fascinating to put a diagnosis on all the different kids I had known.
‘The Institute was an amazing place. It wasn’t that the children’s families had rejected them but rather it was felt their needs were best served in an institutionalised framework. I can only remember one child who was not happy, who said he would rather not have been born.’
Jim’s parents were adamant he would make a fantastic doctor but the teenager had other ideas: he wanted to be an actor. His burning ambition to tread the boards was no doubt partly due to having a world-famous Hollywood actress in the family – and not a distant relative either. Oscar-winning beauty Greer Garson was his mother’s cousin, a remarkable woman who, when Jamie’s acting career took flight in the late 1990s, was referred to incorrectly in the press as his ‘famous great-aunt’.
Greer was an impressive addition to the Dornan family. The strikingly beautiful red-haired star was one of the most popular Hollywood actresses of the World War II era, starring in a string of famous movies including Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), the original Pride and Prejudice and Julia Misbehaves (1948). Five-times Oscar nominated, the screen star won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1943 for Mrs. Miniver and a Golden Globe in 1961 for her role as Eleanor Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello.
Born in Essex, Greer – like Jamie many years later – initially didn’t intend to be an actor but chose to go to university at King’s College in London to study French and eighteenth-century literature. Although she had intended to become a teacher, she began working in an advertising agency and appeared in local theatrical productions. By chance she was then spotted by American film producer Louis B. Mayer and signed to the famous MGM studios in 1937, which led to an incredible forty-year career and a new and glamorous life in the States.
She was undeniably a source of fascination to Jim and his longing to follow in her footsteps saw him apply to the top London drama school, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). Even though, to his immense delight, he won a much sought after place at the famous institution, Jim’s parents point-blank refused to let him pursue his Hollywood dream. ‘My father thought it would be good to have a son that did medicine. Not for a social thing but for him success in life was education,’ he said. ‘Doctors were respected people and would never be out of a job. He was a socialist and it wouldn’t have been down to climbing the social ladder.’
Jim understood the decision but the lost opportunity stayed with him for many years and perhaps rubbed off a little on his son. Indeed, it was undeniable that when, some forty years later, just as Jim was retiring from the NHS, Jamie finally achieved the dream of making it as an actor, the doctor was more than proud watching from the sidelines. Jamie, who was aware of what had happened, commented, ‘His parents were very strict and said, “No, you’re going to medical school.” He’s sort of living vicariously through me now. He’s a great doctor but he would have been a fine actor.’
Jim’s life took a different turn and he went to Queens University in Belfast to study medicine, where he found his calling in obstetrics, the field which specialises in pregnancy, childbirth, and the post-partum care of mothers and their babies.
The young medic was fascinated and overwhelmed by the miracle of birth and even four decades later, after delivering some 6,000 babies, the feeling of wonderment never wore off. It was clearly the right decision for Jamie’s father after all. ‘I failed a few exams, passed a few exams – but once I found obstetrics I knew I had found something that I could really relate to, I never looked back,’ Jim said.
By the time Jamie was born, his beloved father was a professor with decades of experience under his belt and affectionately known as Northern Ireland’s ‘baby doctor’. His career as one of the world’s leading obstetricians and gynaecologists was in full swing and Jim’s impressive medical reputation meant future high-ranking posts within the NHS, including Director of Fetal Medicine at the Belfast Royal Maternity Hospital and Senior Vice-President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in London.
The demands of a round-the-clock career, coupled with the responsibility of raising a young family, meant that Jim had to do some serious juggling. Keen to spend as much time with his children as possible, the devoted father would often take them on his hospital rounds on Saturday mornings. Kind and mild-mannered, Jamie was fascinated when observing his world-famous dad, whose zest for saving lives had made him well-known on the hospital circuit, as he cradled the tiny newborns who were usually a matter of a few days – if not just hours – old.
Maternity wards were certainly an unusual place for a young boy to spend his free time but Jamie adored his father, and family was everything to the Dornans. The bond between father and son was particularly strong and in later years Jamie was in awe of the doctor’s ability to hold down an all-consuming and demanding job while remaining an ever-devoted parent. ‘He’s an astonishing man. I find him hugely impressive in pretty much every facet of his being,’ Jamie admitted.
The hospital rounds benefitted Jim in that he was able to spend time with his children and also allowed Jamie to witness the miracle of life from a very tender age, meaning that the actor’s caring and paternal side was shaped from boyhood. Such profound experience sparked a lifelong desire within Jim’s only son to have children of his own. While many men would be shy to admit it, Jamie knew from a very young age that he wanted to be a father and felt an inner confidence that it would be a positive experience. ‘I get broody even when I see strangers’ babies,’ he confessed as a young man in his twenties. ‘I’ve wanted to be a father for many, many years.’
Of course, he had much to draw on his own idyllic upbringing to use as a template for his own family one day. Little Jamie, being the much-loved youngest child of the Dornan brood, was immediately taken under everyone’s wing. His mother taught him to read, so he became an avid bookworm, his two older sisters had a little brother to preen, protect and look after, while his father taught him all that he knew.
As a schoolboy, Jamie enjoyed all the usual pursuits of fishing, riding bikes and building camps, and his love for animals meant that his dream job at primary school was to be a ranger, which over the years grew more eccentric in design. ‘I saw an episode of Lassie where there was a park ranger who drove a golf buggy. I thought it was the coolest thing. A ranger who played golf – that became the dream,’ he told the Mail on Sunday.
Often found with his nose in a book, the youngest Dornan read as many classic childhood novels as he could get his hands on, which he later admitted was hugely influential on his path to adulthood. ‘I recently reread all the classics from my youth, Swallows and Amazons, Tom Sawyer and Peter Pan, because they must have shaped me in an important way, but I wasn’t sure how,’ he commented years later.
It is true that scenes from his early childhood wouldn’t have been out of place in a Hollywood movie, with long summers spent languishing in the back garden enjoying barbeques and games on the lawn, while cold Irish winters saw the family gather for sumptuous and much-loved roast dinners every Sunday afternoon.
When Jamie started school, he immediately showed an aptitude for all disciplines. His family’s past – whether he knew it or not – and their rich and varied skills and natural strengths seemed to manifest themselves in the young schoolboy.
Sport was his life and he was a die-hard Manchester United fan who loved playing football. It also quickly became obvious that he was a dab hand at rugby; thanks to his speed and slight size, Jamie was ideal for a position on the wing.
He also became renowned for his regular trips to fast-food giant McDonald’s to get fuelled up before matches by scoffing burgers. ‘I’ve played on the wing since I was about eight. I’ve always needed to bulk up so until the modelling took off I was ramming Big Macs down my throat,’ he said. ‘I remember Jamie’s Big Mac obsession,’ a former classmate remembered. ‘He was a fantastic sportsman and was the envy of a lot of his peers.’
A privileged set-up also meant that Jamie had the chance to sample more activities than many do in a lifetime; for example, he shared a passion for golf with his father, who enjoyed a weekly game. As his hometown of Holywood boasted the Royal Belfast Golf Club – the oldest in Ireland, dating back to 1881 – it was a logical step for many local residents to try their hand at the game.
As was the case for most sports Jamie undertook, he was a natural. ‘I’ve been into golf since I was about eleven years old and now play to a thirteen handicap. I’ll try anything once – yoga, Pilates, you name it, I’ll give it a whirl and see what I can learn from it.’
No one within the Dornan clan was the least bit surprised by his natural sporting ability; it was in the genes after all, as he clearly took after his paternal grandfather, James. ‘As a friend brought up at my [second] wedding,’ his father Jim explained, ‘my son Jamie was a great rugby player and my father was a great soccer player and it’s amazing how sporting ability can just skip a generation. But I did enjoy rugby.’
When Jamie also showed early signs of wanting to act, those who knew the family’s history once more weren’t at all shocked. One of his first roles was cross-dressing Widow Twanky in his junior school’s end-of-year pantomime. Although not the easiest parts for any young boy, he nonetheless performed exceptionally well. Jamie loved the buzz of being on stage and his teachers were so impressed with the performance that he was presented with his first drama award.
Excited by his success, and like his father decades previously, he suddenly became fascinated to discover that there was a famous actor in the family. His imagination piqued, Jamie decided to write a letter to Greer Garson to let her know that he was following in her well-trodden footsteps.
After contacting various relatives, the Dornans excitedly managed to track down the retired screen star to an address in Dallas, Texas. ‘When you’re a kid, you’re not really watching things like Mrs. Miniver and the original Pride and Prejudice, so I wasn’t really aware of her but I wrote her a letter,’ Jamie said. ‘She was living in Texas and we managed to get her address through the family. I wrote her this letter saying I was playing Widow Twanky in our primary school production – which, may I add, I won the drama prize for.’
Sadly, in April 1996, just after he had posted the letter, they noticed her obituary in the national press. She had died a week earlier from a heart attack in a Texan hospital at the age of ninety-one. ‘But I promise you, that the week before we got the letter sent off it was on the news that she died. So I personally never had any contact with her. But it’s amazing to be connected to her. I love watching her films. She was my grandmother’s first cousin,’ he explained.
Although life in Holywood was good, nearby Belfast was a sometimes frightening place to live. The rich and diverse capital of Northern Ireland, just six miles away, was at the centre of a longstanding sectarian – and violent – conflict between its Catholic and Protestant populations.
At the time of Jamie’s birth, the opposing groups – republicans, whose followers believed all of Ireland should be an independent republic, and loyalists, who wanted to retain their position within the United Kingdom – were deeply involved in what would be a thirty-year conflict known as the Troubles.
Bombing, assassination and street violence formed a backdrop to life in Belfast between 1968 and 1998. At its worst, the Provisional IRA (Irish Republican Army) detonated twenty-two bombs in Belfast city centre in 1972 on what became known as ‘Bloody Friday’, killing eleven people. Loyalist paramilitaries, including the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), claimed that the killings they carried out were in retaliation for the IRA campaign, although most of their victims were Catholics with no links to the terrorist group.
Despite the fact that the Dornans were living in the leafy suburban town of Holywood, the threat of violence still remained a daily reality. Belfast was referred to as the ‘European capital of terrorism’ and although Jamie fortunately had little experience of the violent backlash of the Troubles, he was aware of the risk it posed. ‘I come from Holywood, a lovely part of the city. Growing up there was like, “Let’s go out shopping in Belfast”, “no bomb scare”, “ah right, f*** it”. You got used to it,’ he described.
Although religion played a part in his family’s history, since grandparents on both sides were Methodist lay preachers, Jamie is quick to point out they were Protestants in name only. ‘I’m Protestant but the word couldn’t mean less to me; I just don’t give a …’ he said. Explaining further, he added in another interview, ‘I think people from Northern Ireland have some kind of unspoken general feeling of what it is to be around segregation. You have an awareness of it because you know how much grief it’s caused. It’s a tiny percentage who have ruined it for that country, that just p****s everyone else off.’
In such troubled times, the Dornans’ comfortable home became in more ways than one a sanctuary from the outside world, where family came first. Additionally, Jamie was sheltered from the violence of his surroundings during his secondary education at Belfast’s Methodist College, a grammar school with an esteemed reputation. The co-educational institution founded in 1865 was not only renowned in Northern Ireland for its academic excellence but also for its impressive record of achievement in music, drama and sport. Situated on the south side of Belfast, ‘Methody’ offered a vast array of subjects and activities to its 1,800 pupils, including an incredible choice of sports, such as golf, rowing, judo, kayaking, fencing, squash and swimming.
With all that on offer, the future model thrived, and competitive sports remained his true forte. Jamie was smart and popular, and the teenager had a close circle of contemporaries who remained friends for life.
Girlfriends, however, were thin on the ground. Against all odds, considering his future as a male supermodel, Jamie was unimpressed by his looks. He was small and slight for his age, and was constantly labelled as ‘cute’ by his older sisters’ friends, which infuriated the rugby-playing teenager.
At the age of sixteen, he was one of the smaller boys in his class and, like his own father, he only reached his full height of six foot when he stopped growing at the age of twenty-one. The teenage years therefore were tough for someone like him, who longed to be seen as manly and sporty. And although his boyish physique didn’t hinder him on the sports pitches, it left him surprisingly and disappointingly lacking in female interest. ‘It’s not like I cleaned up with girls,’ he moaned some years later. ‘I always looked young and I was very small, I hated being cute.’
He was, however, deeply interested in the opposite sex and at the age of twelve he finally managed to experience his first kiss. Sadly, it wasn’t the most romantic of clinches; indeed, just like most people’s first forays into romance, it was quick and not particularly memorable. ‘My first kiss was that classic of behind the bike sheds at school when I was twelve or thirteen years old with a girl I can’t remember,’ he said.
With women out of the question at the time, he ploughed his focus into sport, music and acting. He suffered a few setbacks, and, as he was asthmatic, he had to endure the inconvenience of taking his inhaler with him everywhere he went. However, not even a lung condition could stop Jamie from prospering in competitive sport; he was focused, driven and quicker than many of his contemporaries.
He was a keen athlete who could run exceptionally fast – once recording 100 metres in 11.1 seconds. He also found himself on the rugby, football and cricket teams, and regular sports fixtures and matches meant that his devoted parents would often be seen cheering him on from the sidelines. Despite his father’s busy career, Jim would try hard to make it down to the muddy sports pitch to support his son as often as possible.
However, his sporting achievements weren’t accomplished without a good dose of blood and tears, as he twice ended up in hospital with a broken nose. At fifteen he was accidentally hit in the face with a ball by his tennis coach ‘for cheekiness’, and he ended up in hospital for a second time following a ‘particularly nasty’ rugby collision.
Off pitch, Jamie indulged in the rather gentler pursuit of the dramatic arts, and his enthusiasm for drama was further ignited when he joined local amateur dramatics group the Holywood Players. Run by his dad’s sister, Carole Stewart, Jamie was handed a host of roles, which allowed him to practise and hone his considerable acting skills. ‘I did a lot of stage stuff growing up. My auntie runs an amateur dramatic society back in Belfast so I was doing Chekhov at twelve years old,’ he described. Years later, he also added, ‘I loved acting and I always wanted to go to get my A Levels and go to drama school.’
His father Jim was immensely proud of the family connection and was keen, unlike his own parents, to encourage Jamie to follow his acting dream. ‘My sister should really have been an actor too but in those days my parents didn’t encourage it, so she’s a physiotherapist but also a huge amateur dramatist. I think almost every year her productions make it into the finals of local competitions both in the UK and Ireland and she is just a star.
‘Amateur drama is big in Ireland … what else do you do on a wet winter’s night in Ireland or for that matter on a wet summer’s night in Ireland?!’ he explained.
Jamie was also a rising star in Methodist College’s impressive school productions. ‘He was very modest and one of his best subjects was drama,’ Jamie’s former vice-principal, Norma Gallagher, recalled. ‘I remember him making a very good milkman in Blood Brothers and Baby Face in Bugsy Malone.’ The latter was a role that had clearly been assigned to the pint-sized Jamie because of his young, boyish looks, similar to those of the fresh-faced Hollywood star Dexter Fletcher, who played the part in the famous musical gangster film in 1976.
Life was going extremely well for Jamie; apart from the usual highs and lows of being a teenager, he was happy, secure and doing well at school, with two loving parents who had been there for him every step of the way. But to his horror, everything was set to change suddenly. The comfortable world he had known and cherished for the previous fifteen years was to be seemingly destroyed in one crushing blow when unexpectedly his mother Lorna was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
It was a bitter dose of reality for the young fifteen-year-old to bear, and the eighteen months that followed were to be the most horrendous of his life.