Fifty Shades of Grey may have been a hit with the fans and achieved huge box office records, but critics didn’t take well to the trilogy. Rotten Tomatoes scores gave the first movie a Rotten 25%, with Darker and Freed both getting 11%. Jamie Dornan, who signed on as Christian Grey for the three films, recalled going into hiding once negative reviews for the first movie came out.
It mustn’t have been easy for Jamie Dornan’s cinematic breakthrough to have been in the E.L. James-adapted film. He got real with BBC Sounds about receiving rave reviews for his work in the Northern Irish drama series The Fall to getting mediocre ones in Fifty Shades of Grey.
I think I hid. I’m coming off the back of career-altering reviews for ‘The Fall’ and BAFTA nominations and all the sort of madness ‘The Fall’ brought to just sort of ridicule. We went down to Sam and Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s place, and they weren’t there. They let us have their place in the country, and we sort of hid there for a while and just shut ourselves off from the world a bit. And then sort of came out the other side.
I can only imagine the fear Jamie Dornan was experiencing about the fate of his career starring in a poorly-received film series that everyone was flocking to see. It’s because of all of the attention and reviews the Irish actor got that he said he wouldn’t take a job like Fifty Shades of Grey again. Being part of a franchise can, after all, make it easy to be typecasted, and the last thing he wanted was for people to only see him as Christian Grey.
The critics may have sent hate to the first Fifty Shades of Grey movie, but its box office number of $570 million against a budget of $40 million guaranteed film adaptations of the next two books. Dornan continued to say the financial success of the erotic romance film only heightened his fears of what was to come.
I mean, it made so much money, so like [films] two and three were like, greenlit overnight. So it’s a strange thing, because then you’re like, ‘There’s a bit of ridicule here, and I’m now contracted to do two more of them.’ And knowing that there will be much more damnation to come.
Sadly, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed still didn’t do much better critically. Jamie Dornan remembers one brutal review that stuck with him that compared his character to “oatmeal.” While the Belfast actor said he “didn’t entirely disagree with it,” he still thought it was “harsh” to read.
Even though the Fifty Shades of Grey films didn’t respond to Jamie Dornan positively, it wasn’t the end of his career. In fact, he began to appreciate being in indie films more, as they provided a more close-knit environment with his crew compared to the large-scale setup he was used to. After Fifty Shades Freed, he starred in the Golden Globe-nominated film A Private War and the TIFF-released sci-fi horror Synchronic, and he earned awards notice for the Oscar-winning movie Belfast. The 41-year-old is even on the drama thriller series The Tourist, which reviews say is fifty shades of excellent. It proves that if you have enough opportunities to show off your talent, critics will eventually recognize it.
Jamie Dornan may have gone into hiding for a bit after the negative reviews of Fifty Shades of Grey came out, but he didn’t regret being part of the film franchise. He knew the series would light a fire under his bum for years with critics comparing every next performance to his work as Christian Grey, but it’s a reality he’s learned to live with as time passed. Maybe eventually Dornan will play an unforgettable role that will make critics and audiences forget that he ever was Christian Grey, like how Robert Pattinson established a successful career outside of Twilight.
You can see Jamie Dornan in his breakout performance in the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy with your Max subscription.