Phew! These Are The Extreme Lengths Jamie Dornan Took To Get Fit For His New Film

If you’ve ever seen Fifty Shades Of Grey (or Googled ‘Jamie Dornan topless’ – c’mon, admit it), then you no doubt already that Jamie Dornan is a pretty fit fella.

Hitting the gym is one thing of course, but hitting a South African desert for three and a half months to film in the blistering heat is quite another.

Speaking to STELLAR.ie at the Dublin premiere of Netflix’s period war drama The Siege Of Jadotville last night, Jamie said the pre-filming training was definitely an eye-opener for him, especially considering he considers himself just a “poncey actor” underneath it all.

Source: Netflix

“It had its challenges… We did these two weeks of bootcamp before we started,” he explained.

The Siege Of Jadotville tells the story of the “unsung heroes” of Camp A, a group of 150 Irish soliders who took on 3,000 Belgian and French mercenaries in the Congo in the 1960s. Considering he plays the lead role of Commandant Patrick Quinlan, Jamie was no doubt first up to the post at boot camp, but he says the training was as much a bonding experience for the cast as it was a chance to get film-fit.

“I’d never met any of them [the cast] before. There were lads from all over Ireland and a few English lads thrown in doing accents as well. It was great bunch, and I really mean that. It doesn’t always happen that way and it could have been very different.”

Jamie’s co-star Jason O’Mara, who was in attendance along with the rest of the cast last night, recalls days spent “running 2km through the bush with rifles” to prepare the cast.

Source: Netflix

“At the end of the day though, it made us feel more like soliders,” he told STELLAR.ie exclusively. “We knew our way around weapons and we did some tactical work as well, so that when we’ve moving in the film it’s as soldiers, not as actors with guns.”

The extremes of 14 weeks in the desert were slightly lessened for Jamie considering he had his family living in Johannesburg with him for the duration of the filming period, but it wasn’t that way for some of his co-stars.

“I think it was a bit easier for me,” Jamie admits. “The other boys were there by themselves with no girlfriends, wives, boyfriends or whatever it may be, and that’s intense. It takes its toll.”

Catch The Siege Of Jadotville on Netflix from Friday October 7th.

• Jamie Dornan
• jason omara
• the siege of jadotville