– 24 October 2013
Northern Irish actor Jamie Dornan has landed the lead role in the movie version of Fifty Shades of Grey, according to Variety magazine.
The 31-year-old Calvin Klein model-turned-actor, from Holywood, reportedly takes the place of Charlie Hunnam, who dropped out just a month after being announced in the role of Christian Grey, citing a busy schedule.
Dornan, who now lives in London with his singer wife Amelia Warner, would be catapulted to international stardom by the high-profile Fifty Shades gig.
US actress Dakota Johnson (23) has already been cast to play innocent college graduate Anastasia Steele in the big-screen adaptation of the popular EL James erotic novels.
Dornan was last on our screens in the Belfast-set BBC crime drama The Fall, as grief counsellor Paul Spector by day and a sexually motivated serial killer by night.
The Co Down boy plays Sheriff Graham Humbert in ABC series “Once Upon a Time” and was regularly pictured in gossip magazines when he dated Keira Knightly for two years.
This year he became a patron of Carryduff-based TinyLife – Northern Ireland’s charity for premature and vulnerable babies. Dornan has long been associated with the charity through his father, Professor James Dornan, a founding member who still sits on the board of directors.
According to Variety, when Charlie Hunnam exited Fifty Shades of Grey, U and Focus executives “decided to go for more of a discovery” and brought in Dornan and Billy Magnussen to test opposite Dakota Johnson last Friday.
Pressure was on the find a replacement for Hunnam, as the project was due to begin filming on November 1st.
Artist turned filmmaker, Sam Taylor-Johnson, is directing the movie and the studio hopes to have the movie in cinemas in August of 2014.
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