Jamie Dornan has opened up on how his late mum 'would never have believed' his success.
Speaking from the Dead Rabbit bar in New York, owned by two men from North Belfast, the Holywood man opened up on his relationship with both of his parents.
Jamie 's mum Lorna died from cancer when he was just 16, with his father Jim passing away in March 2021 after contracting Covid-19.
The actor told Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist: "My mum was a very beautiful, very glamourous person, loved to get dressed up, always looked immaculate, would have had a real eye on, I don't know, celebrity... [She] would have been very enamoured by people in that world I guess.
"And she would have never have believed it. There were no signs at that stage that I'd do anything like this. I was so obsessed with sport.
"I had always done drama, I did drama at school but the only prize I ever won outside of sport was a drama prize when I was ten. I was in drag playing this pantomime...
"I think my mum, she wouldn't have seen it coming. She wouldn't be able to believe what's happened.
"Any part of it, even the first decade of modelling, it didn't look like that was in my future at all."
Also chatting about his late father, the Northern Irish star said he feels lucky that he was always told how loved he was.
"I'm very fortunate that... I've never achieved anything without being told how proud my dad is of me. He has always done that, he was always, always so proud of me.
"Dad always had my back, some people go their whole lives without hearing those words from their folks, so I consider myself very lucky.
"I was always told that I was loved, always, always, always," Jamie said.
The Fifty Shades actor also told the podcast how he has inherited his father's parenting style.
"I feel like dad even had more of a responsibility, I lost my mother when I was 16 and my mum was loving but not in that same way, she wasn't very tactile and wouldn't have told us she loved us that often - so dad, there was always sort of making up for that.
"We always felt so loved from both sides but dad was just more vocal about it and certainly more tactile with us and I've definitely inherited that from dad.
"It's important, we need to feel loved, it's literally all we have. I feel very blessed that I get to shower these three little girls with love constantly. It's not a chore, they are very lovable little people," he said.
Jamie added how he loves the response new film 'Belfast' has received - a semi-autobiographical film from Kenneth Branagh set here during the Troubles.
The 39-year-old said: "We don't clap when films end [like in the US], we don't, but apparently that's been going on in Belfast in the first few nights that the film came out. It's brilliant to hear that, I just love that. It just shows how necessary this story is for people from home.
"My dad was a very proud Belfast man, very proud of the place and the people but also enraged by the people and the sort of stuck in their ways politics, always wanting to move the conversation forward.
"The importance of this movie wouldn't have been lost in him. I take comfort in the fact he knew I did it, we finished it, but he didn't get to see it.
"I mean, my dad was proud of the s*** stuff that I've done, and there's been plenty of it."
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