Jamie Dornan, the actor known for Fifty Shades of Grey and The Fall, has admitted that he stalked a woman on the London underground to help prepare for the latter role.
In The Fall, Dornan plays serial killer Paul Spector, and in an interview with the LA Times he revealed the rather dubious bit of method acting he did to help him get into the character’s mindset. “Can we get arrested for this?” he said. “Hold on … this is a really bad reveal: I, like, followed a woman off the train one day to see what it felt like to pursue someone like that.
“I really kept my distance … she got off a few stops earlier than I was planning so I said right, I have to commit to this. I followed her around a couple of street corners and then was like: what are you doing?
“It felt kind of exciting, in a really sort of dirty way,” he continued. “I’m sort of not proud of myself. But I do honestly think I learned something from it, because I’ve obviously never done any of that. It was intriguing and interesting to enter that process of ‘what are you following her for?’ and ‘what are you trying to find out?’”
The Fall, a BBC drama series co-starring Gillian Anderson, has already fielded some criticism for its misogynist central character. Among its opponents, Rachel Cooke wrote in the Guardian that the show is “in the business of glamorising violence against women by equating it not only with sex, but with sexual attractiveness”.
The show’s creator Allan Cubitt responded to the accusations of misogyny last year by saying: “The entire ethos of the show, I would have thought, was completely clear [. It] was an attempt to take on a rather difficult subject of why men turn so readily to violence, and why we see so many examples of violence against women perpetrated by men. Every beat of The Fall is really trying to explain that, to dissect that, and I think The Fall is trying to do that from a feminist point of view.”
Fifty Shades of Grey meanwhile, in which Dornan plays an emotionally distant billionaire with a fascination in sadism, was criticised for its depiction of what some viewers saw as an abusive relationship. It was protested against by domestic violence campaigners and BDSM practitioners alike, who saw Dornan’s character Christian Grey as trying to both physically harm and psychologically manipulate his lover Anastasia Steele.
Its director Sam Taylor-Johnson also defended her work, saying: “I thought, if we can take this girl on a journey, where we empower her and don’t leave her as a victim, that’s job done … Yes, the film is hardcore in places, there’s dominance in places – but at no point did I feel like it had crossed a boundary.”
In a recent Guardian interview, Dornan admitted: “I consider myself quite light-hearted, pretty easy-going, and I keep playing sick psychopath bastards! It kinda worries me sometimes how comfortable I am in that zone.”
