Jamie Dornan explores comedy roles to escape The Fall's psycho-killer pigeon-hole

Northern Irish actor Jamie Dornan says he wants to return to comedy after he felt pigeon-holed following his breakout role as a serial killer in BBC thriller The Fall.

The Fall ran for three seasons from 2013-16 and switched from BBC Two to BBC One due to its popularity, with Dornan's mesmerising performance as Paul Spector a reason many tuned in to watch the chilling action.

Dornan told ITV's This Morning: "I always thought I'd do comedy early on [in my career]. And then I played a psychopath and nobody really thought of me in a comedic way. So I've been trying to get back to that a wee bit."

He was talking specifically about comedy Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, which was co-written by and co-stars Bridesmaids actress Kristen Wiig and is scheduled for release in 2021. It was meant to come out four days ago, he said, but its release was postponed for a year.

Dornan went onto to play the kinky Christian Grey in softcore sensation 50 Shades of Grey, but was less worried about getting pigeon-hold as an S&M fiend.

"What's great about [50 Shades] and the success it had is that they're so unique," he said. "It's very hard to be typecast as someone like that because there's no one like him really, there's not been other movies about characters like him, so it was such a one-off in that the books, the movies and the trilogy, was its own thing."

More immediately, Dornan was talking to Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford about his new movie, Endings, Beginnings, a romantic drama co-starring Big Little Lies' Shailene Woodley, which is released on Amazon Prime from Friday, 7th August.

https://youtu.be/LiDW3p2_mas

He revealed that he wasn't quite prepared for the improvised nature of the shoot and wanted to run away on his first night on set.

"Honestly, we were doing a night shoot in the Valley in LA and the first time you see my character... and Daphne and Frank, Shailene's character and Sebastian Stan's character, had already been shooting for two weeks, so everyone else was in the groove of it and I came in first night, not knowing anybody and I was so terrified I thought about running away."

"I thought, 'what are the ramifications if I do?'

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