Jamie Dornan has recalled the devastating moment he found out his father had died while stuck in hotel quarantine last year.
The Irish actor was isolating in Australia before filming his BBC series The Tourist in March 2021 when he was told his father, Jim Dornan, had passed away after contracting Covid-19.
The 73-year-old, who was a world renowned obstetrician, had previously been diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.
During an interview with News Corp Australia, the 39-year-old admitted he was a “wreck” when he first heard the news.
“Getting that news no matter where you are geographically is sh**e, you know,” Jamie said.
“I was stuck out there, denied seeing my sisters, denied seeing my stepmother – not ideal, but you’re a wreck no matter where you are when something like that happens to you.”
Despite his father’s passing, Jamie honoured his work commitments and finished filming The Tourist in Australia – which he said was a “good distraction”.
“There might be lasting damage, who knows, but at the time it felt like a good distraction,” he confessed.
During a recent interview with The Telegraph, the Belfast star admitted 2021 was the “worst year” of his life, after losing his beloved father to Covid-19.
The 39-year-old said although he had a very successful year career-wise, the death of his father overshadowed everything else.
He said: “It’s a strange thing to end the year with all this positivity — with so much praise for Belfast and a lot of good talk about The Tourist… Because on many levels it’s been the worst year of my life, and the hardest.”
The Holywood native also revealed that his family still hadn’t held a funeral for Jim, 10 months after his death.
Jamie continued: “Truly, you could search far and wide and it would be very hard to find something negative to say about my dad.”
“He was a beacon of positivity — that is my overriding takeaway. His kindness, his willingness to talk to anybody and everybody.”
“He used to say, ‘You treat the person who cleans the court the same as you treat the judge.’ Dad had time for everybody.”
“I’ve tried to take that into my own life. We’re talking about a professor of medicine here, an insanely intelligent man. He was so positive. He would say, ‘This has happened, how do we move forward and get something good out of this?'”
Jamie lost his mother Lorna to pancreatic cancer when he was just 16-years-old, and the actor recalled his father telling him: “Don’t let this be the thing that defines you.”
Speaking about his mother’s passing, he said: “I am probably a much stronger person as a result. I was young and naive and I had to grow up really fast.”
“I had to find a strength and resilience that I didn’t know I had.”
