Jamie Dornan said that he would tell women on dates that he was a “landscape gardener or worked for Google” rather than admit to being a model.
Dornan spoke about his early career as a male model for six years in a recent profile interview with GQ.
“I didn’t love it. And I still don’t like having my photograph taken. I find it odd. I find it an unnatural thing to happen,” Dornan told the outlet. “It’s not fun to be told continually to move your head about like it is on a swivel.”
Dornan further said that he was grateful not to never perform at a fashion show because he couldn’t deal with the “hyper energy” and “vanity.”
”Whenever I went on a date or met a girl in a pub or whatever, I’d say I was a landscape gardener or worked for Google – anything but admit to having my photograph taken for a living.”
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Despite this, Dornan said that his experience as a model helped him “get comfortable, or uncomfortable, around a camera.”
Dornan modelled for Abercrombie & Fitch, Dior Homme, and later Calvin Klein with Kate Moss and Eva Mendes during his modelling career.
The New York Times labelled him “The Golden Torso” in 2006, and GQ branded him “the male Kate Moss.”
Later on this year, Dornan will star in British filmmaker Kenneth Branagh’s next film, Belfast, the narrative of a working-class family and their little son’s childhood in Northern Ireland during the turbulent late 1960s.
Read the full profile interview of Jamie Dornan here.