BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs 10 things we learned from ...

In 2012, early in his career, Jamie auditioned for The Fall, a TV show about a police detective [played by Gillian Anderson] on the trail of a serial killer.

“I auditioned to play a police officer who dies in the second episode,” he says. “At the time, I was happy just to get in the room. I didn’t hear anything. I was going to LA for a pilot season anyway, whilst I was out there, I was probably a week or 10 days into this trip and I got a call from my agent saying, ‘They want you to audition again for The Fall. It’s for a different part.’ I remember thinking, ‘oh here we go’. They said, ‘No, it’s for the main guy.’ I remember thinking, ‘If I get this, this will change the course of my career.’ I was right. It did. It literally change my career overnight.”

The show was a huge hit and Jamie was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Actor.

10. He hid after the reviews for Fifty Shades of Grey came out

Jamie starred as Christian Grey in the film Fifty Shades of Grey, co-starring Dakota Johnson, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson. Jamie returned to the role for both sequels which, like the first, were based on the erotic novels by E.L. James. The films were very popular with audiences and performed well at the Box Office but didn’t go down well with the critics.

“I think I hid [when the reviews came out]. Coming off the back of career-altering nominations for The Fall and BAFTA nominations and all this sort of madness that The Fall brought, to just ridicule almost. Actually we [with his wife Millie] went down to Sam and Aaron’s [Sam’s husband] place and they weren’t there and they let us have their place in the country and we hid there for a while and shut ourselves off from the world for a bit and then came out the other side. [It] made so much money so two and three were greenlit overnight and it’s a strange thing because there’s a bit of ridicule here and I’m now contracted to do two more, knowing that there will be much more damnation to come!”

Looking back at his work on the franchise he says “I’ve just had very glowing reviews for recent work and there wouldn’t be many of them that don’t mention 50 Shades in them.” Jamie laughs, “A lot of reviews are like, ‘He’s great, but lest we forget when he wasn’t great.’ Give us a chance! But, no, regret that I did them? No.”