Jamie Dornan has opened up on losing his mum and four of his best friends during his teenage years.
In an interview with The Irish Times, the Holywood actor said he had a “difficult” few years towards the end of his time at school.
The 42-year-old’s mother Lorna died after a battle with pancreatic cancer when the actor was 16-years-old, and four of his best friends passed away the following year.
Jamie said: “The reality is I didn’t do as well at school as I should have. And there’s lots of factors to that. I lost my mom, and I lost four of my best friends in an accident, and I had a pretty difficult couple of years towards the end of my school life.“
Dornan said this drove him to ‘make something’ of himself. The fifty-shades star told: “It was a grim time, to be honest with you. But what that did for me was lit some kind of fire under me. I got really driven. I remain really driven to… I don’t know if succeed is the right word, but just to make something of myself, or prove myself, maybe.
“I struggled a lot with that idea of people feeling sorry for me because I lost my mum so young, and I’ve always just felt like I’ve had a point to prove that I’m okay, weirdly.
“I guess that could have worked in whatever I found myself doing, whether I was a gardener or an estate agent or an actor or whatever it was. I think I would have been hell bent on achieving.”
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