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|  Jamie says the song is not about Keira
Quote: | Today's Sunday Times has a two-page interview with Jamie Dornan in which he denies 'Only On The Outside' was written about his relationship with Keira. | Quote: Pop: Sons and lovers
Jamie Dornan, Keira Knightley’s old flame, has found a new passion as lead singer of Sons of Jim, says Kate Butler
 When Jamie Dornan, the Co Down model and lead singer with Sons of Jim, showcased four new songs at London’s Teatro club last month, the tabloid newspapers soon set about decoding the heartfelt lyrics. The song Only on the Outside, it was reported confidently, was written about Dornan’s former girlfriend, the actress Keira Knightley.
It wasn’t such an extraordinary leap to make. Dornan and Knightley had a very public romance for two years before splitting last summer. Only on the Outside, meanwhile, details the singer’s disillusionment with a lover who is being influenced by “fancy friends”. Dornan, however, denies that it is about Knightley, pointing out that he composes all of the songs with his bandmate, David Alexander. “Considering Dave and I write together, I can’t work out how it could be true,” he says.
NI_MPU('middle');Such denials are becoming routine for Dornan. Since he and Knightley split up, the 24-year-old model’s love life has been under the media microscope. Sienna Miller and Lindsay Lohan have been linked with him, while a recent Calvin Klein photo shoot with Kate Moss led to speculation that there was a budding romance. The truth, according to Dornan, is nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of the celebrity gossip hacks.
“It’s funny, I did exactly the same job two years ago for Calvin Klein, but I did it with Natalia Vodianova,” he says. “This year, because it’s with Kate, there’s a lot more hype about it.”
Although Dornan was already a successful model before he began dating Knightley, the pairing made him a tabloid favourite. Dark and brooding, his athletic physique comes from a passion for rugby. He is also slight, however, lending a vulnerable romantic air to his features.
When he moved to London (where he now lives with his older sister, Jessica) to pursue modelling, he lost a stone in weight. “Not consciously,” he says. “When I was playing rugby I was in the gym the whole time. (In London) I just didn’t go to the gym as much — at all, actually — so I just naturally weakened.”
He says he has no idea what level of celebrity he enjoys and that the tabloids are only an intermittent annoyance, something he is still able to laugh off. Whatever experience Dornan has had of fame thus far, though, he’s not shy of pursuing it further.
For the past year, Dornan has been recording songs with former school friend Alexander.
He also has a Hollywood debut under his belt, appearing in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, due to be released here early next year. While some credited Knightley with launching his acting career, Dornan says his modelling brought him to the attention of Coppola, who was friendly with a photographer he worked with in New York.
Dornan had acted throughout his teens. Growing up in Holywood, Co Down, his aunt was a member of a local amateur dramatics club, the Holywood Players. When he was 14, Dornan toured the Irish amateur theatre festival circuit, appearing in Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard. His father’s interest in acting was also influential.
“When he left school, he wanted to be an actor and was offered a place at Rada,” says Dornan. “He didn’t take it. Back then things were a bit different and his parents were very strict and wanted him to be a doctor. It has all worked out very well for him — he’s a very good doctor — but I think there’s part of him that would love to have lived out that life and he’s kind of living it through me, which I think he enjoys.”
While attending secondary school at Belfast’s Methodist College — he was a boarder for his final two years — Dornan’s primary interest was rugby. Despite not being academic, he passed three A-levels: classics, English literature and history of art.
After leaving school, he joined the Harlequins rugby club in his home city. Then, in 2001, his other older sister, Liesa, spotted an advertisement for Channel 4’s Model Behaviour series and encouraged him to go along to its auditions.
“I wasn’t too keen, to be honest,” he says. “It wasn’t something I wanted to do. Back then I was playing a lot of rugby. I was a bit of a lad. Male modelling didn’t really seem like the next step. So I persuaded a friend to go with me, and he came with me and didn’t get asked back the next day. I was on my own from there, but it worked out quite well.”
Although Dornan didn’t make it to the final of the series, he was spotted by an agency and was soon starring in advertising campaigns for Dolce & Gabbana and Dior. In the meantime he was still in contact with Alexander, who was taking the more prosaic route of studying law in Newcastle. “Dave and I went to school together and became quite friendly in sixth year,” says Dornan. “We shared a lot of the same musical interests. We recorded some stuff back in Ireland purely to have something on CD and now and again we’d rehearse a bit, but we weren’t taking it too seriously.”
“Then management caught wind of the demo we’d made, and so Dave finished his law degree and for the past year we’ve been concentrating on it. Early on, while he was doing his finals, we supported KT Tunstall. Things started to take off a bit and now we’ve released the second single.”
The pair shared another bond in that both had lost a parent. Dornan’s mother died when he was 15, while Alexander’s father passed away when he was 17. Alexander cites his father’s record collection — Bob Dylan, Buddy Holly and the Rolling Stones, among others — as an early influence, and the duo named the band after their fathers, both called Jim.
NI_MPU('middle');“It’s helpful with our writing,” says Alexander. “The two of us have come up on the same street. I think we can talk about it to each other and we know what the other is getting at when certain emotions or things are put down in song.”
Their new single, My Burning Sun, is on their own label, Doorstep, named after a favourite sandwich place in Belfast. While the pair admire the post-punk and ska influences of English bands such as the Kooks, they have eschewed this achingly hip path. Instead, Dornan’s confident voice anchors a traditional-rock sound reminiscent of Counting Crows. Their lyrics, meanwhile, are more romantic and fey than, say, the spikiness of Arctic Monkeys.
Currently in the studio with Cliff Jones, the frontman of the 1990s pop act Gay Dad, Dornan and Alexander are working towards recording an album and are in talks with big labels. For the moment, they are happy to take the independent route, and a busy messageboard on their Myspace website already indicates a strong female following.
Meanwhile, Dornan continues to flirt with celebrity. Just back from Cannes, where he was publicising Marie Antoinette, he can expect a further push into the limelight on the film’s release. Coppola’s movie was booed at the festival, but its target audience is much younger and it has already proved a hit in France.
Portraying the doomed court of Versailles as one dominated by teenagers, the director plays on the youth factor with a contemporary soundtrack that is jarringly anachronistic. Cast as a Swedish count who has a dalliance with Kirsten Dunst’s queen, Dornan’s heady good looks will make him the perfect pin-up for teenagers worldwide.
“He was the richest man in Sweden at the time,” says Dornan about his character. “He was a soldier as well, so it’s nice to play somebody who’s supposed to be pretty tough, because I’m not so tough. I’d like to think of myself as tough sometimes, but I’m probably not.”
My Burning Sun is on Doorstep
|  Crazyness |
06-15-2006, 07:28 PM
