Jamie Dornan has opened up about his surprising past as a reality TV star.
Back in 2001, the Irish actor appeared on the Channel 4 series Model Behaviour, which saw aspiring models compete to win a one-year contract with an agency.
Speaking on Sirius XM’s Radio Andy, Jamie explained how he ended up on the show when he was 20-years-old.
The 38-year-old said: “The truth behind that is, I’d been at university for a year, I was very sporty and I was playing rugby at uni and drinking a lot.”
“And I decided I was going to drop out of university ‘cause … it wasn’t the right space for me at the time. And I was like, ‘F**k this. I’m going to like do something else in my life,’ but I didn’t have a plan.”
“My dad was really worrying, like, ‘What’s your plan going to be?’ And it was just one of those weird things at that time, my whole family were sort of gunning together, trying to work out what can Jamie do next.”
The Holywood native said his sister then pushed him to audition for Model Behaviour, and said: “This was sort of almost pre-reality TV. It wasn’t even being pitched to us. We didn’t really know what it was.”
“My sister says, ‘You should go.’ And I said, ‘What is it?’ And she says, ‘To be a model.’ And I was like, ‘Why would I want to be a model?’… No kid where I’m from grows up wanting to be a model, I’ll tell you that. So, I was like, ‘No, I’m not doing it.’”
Jamie eventually decided to go to the audition, after he convinced one of his friends to go with him.
The Fifty Shades star laughed: “I actually didn’t even do that well on the show, but it got me enough to sort of move to London. And that was it.”
“Then like two months later I had moved to London and had convinced everyone to let me follow some dream…
“I mean I never wanted to be a model, I hated it, but I had acted at school so it felt like a bit of a gateway into that, so yeah it was a crazy time.”
Jamie also said he still thanks his friend for going to the audition with him.
“I wouldn’t be sat here if he hadn’t got out of bed that day, I truly mean that,” he said.
“I would have worked out something else, I would have been a real estate agent, I honestly would have found something else to do.”
