To portray a character like Christian Grey is like a double edged sword. On one side, it’s a great opportunity, that if you take advantage of, it could possibly turn into a global phenomenon. On the other side, it’s one of those characters that can define a career… maybe for worse (the star of Fifty Shades of Grey is not precisely a classic leading man). Although we get the feeling that this does not affect Jamie Dornan (born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1982). He’s said it himself that if this literary character with a passion for BDSM, discredits his work, it will be other roles that will help him rise above. He’s done it before. With a modelling career of several years, he overcame the prejudice that follows a guy with “looks” like his and truly get a grip of what he passionately loves: acting. It’s interesting to review this improbable icon precisely today, with the premiere of Fifty Shades Freed this February 9th, the third part of he film adaptation. If we review all the interviews he gave in 2014, we discover a more positive Jamie Dornan, blinded to his earlier critics of his role as Mr. Grey. The others after, nevertheless, show us a more simple, but more authentic and sincere, one that recognises that maybe his role in the first film of this saga was possibly the worst in his curriculum. So what? What if he has better ones? The one he keeps talking so proudly of is The Fall, the British intrigue series in which he gave life to a family man/rapist/murderer and earned him great praise. The reviews he obtained for the Netflix movie of The Siege of Jadotville were also satisfactory, but not so much for The 9th Life of Louis Drax, by the Alexandre Aja.

But where will we see him in the months to come? Besides the last film of the erotic franchise, and in which we imagine he’s more comfortable (we also believe he’s glad to be moving on from it, due to his previous statements), Jamie Dornan has other film projects. Among them, Robin Hood: Origins, a new adaptation to the Sherwood forest hero (note: Jamie won’t be the main character, Taron Egerton will); and My Dinner with Hervé, HBO’s tv film which centers around the french actor Hervé Villechaize (Peter Dinklage).

Fifty Shades star Jamie Dornan talks stripping down, reading up, and the truth about Zoolander.

Jamie Dornan has made a career out of being objectified. Before he was cast as Christian Grey, the physical embodiment of a billion housewives’ sexual fantasies in Fifty Shades of Grey, he appeared in a Calvin Klein campaign, with Kate Moss draped over his yoked chest. The New York Times dubbed him the Golden Torso. Still, news of his casting didn’t excite the millions of rabid readers who’d made E.L.James’s BDSM trilogy a golden hit. First, fans were upset he wasn’t Ryan Gosling (or Ian Somerhalder or Alexander Skarsgard). Then, once they’d seen the film, they were angry he hadn’t gone full frontal. Co-star Dakota Johnson joked about mounting a campaign saying “Everybody wants to see the D.” (More on that below.)

JAMIE: “No.”

ELLE: “Seriously?”

JAMIE: “(Laughs) My life has changed immeasurably since Fifty Shades. But not as a direct result of Fifty Shades. Four days before we started filming the first one, Millie and I had our first child. Two weeks before filming the second and third films back to back, we had our second child. This crazy career transition, I guess I could only see it as something that took time away from my kids. It’s a job. A job that I love and that I find very rewarding. But it is just a job.”

ELLE: “A job that requires covering your junk in a modesty pouch…”

JAMIE: “Let me tell you a modesty-pouch story. You’re sort of presented with a few options and sizes. They’re all skin-coloured, but, like, if you’d gotten jaundice. That colour. Like an ill person. I picked one out. Everyone had left the room. As I was putting it on, I saw a little label stitched inside. It said, “INMATE #3.””

ELLE: “Wait. It was used?”

JAMIE: “I very nearly puked. As my genitals came to a rest at the bottom of this thing, I thought, someone has worn this. I actually called the wardrobe assistant. I was like, “Dude, what the fuck? This is secondhand?” He said, “No, trust me.” But he lost my trust.”

ELLE: “I heard the studio offered you an additional $1 million to go full frontal. True?”

JAMIE: “It was $30 million, to show one testicle. (Laughs) No, that whole thing with offering more money to go nude? That didn’t happen.”

ELLE: :”Why not do it?”

JAMIE: “I don’t know if i said I wouldn’t. You see my arse quite a lot. That doesn’t really bother me. You see a lot of Dakota’s tits. I would show my tits if I had them. I just thought, we don’t need to be flashing the rest if it’s not essential to the story. We’re not making porn as much as people think we are.”

ELLE: “Your wife hasn’t seen any of the Fifty Shades movies. Still true?”

JAMIE: “True.”

ELLE: “Is it strange to work on something for three yeas and not share it with your partner?”

JAMIE: “No. I mean, I share the day. I talk about the job. She’s close with Dakota, and she’s close with Sam (Taylor-Johnson), who directed the first movie, and with the producers. She hasn’t seen it, but she’s included. She just doesn’t feel the need to watch it.”

ELLE: “You got your start as a male model. Did people assume you were like Derek Zoolander?”

JAMIE: “I genuinely believe Zoolander isn’t that far off from some of those dudes. If I meet a male model now, I presume he’s stupid. A lot of them are. I used to get offended. If people knew you were a model, they’d start talking slightly slower, like you literally were the third guy along in Darwin’s evolution of man. But I’m not ungrateful. I was in my twenties, and I was getting paid to lean against walls and look like I wanted to hit people.”

ELLE: “Was there a time a photographer or booker crossed the line?”

JAMIE: “Yeah dude. Fuck. Early on? Fuck. You’d be sent to these dodgy little apartments around London. “Oh, this up and coming photographer wants to meet you and take a couple of Polaroids. It’ll be really good for your portfolio.” I remember one guy, I don’t know his name. He was like, “Let’s take some pictures.” Yeah, okay. Fine. Then he goes, “Take off your trousers.” I said, “Look, I kinda want to leave.” I was getting dressed. He kept coming in, acting like he’d left something in the room. There was nothing in that room except a chair. Then he stopped me at the door, and, I’ll never forget this, he said he was going to make spaghetti bolognese for us and open a bottle of wine. I called my agent and said “Don’t ever fucking send me to one of those creepy bastards again.””

ELLE: “What great lesson did you learn from your father?”

JAMIE: “Dad wanted to be an actor. He failed his final exams at school; he failed the first year of university. His parents wanted him to be a doctor. Eventually, he fell in love with the idea once he specialised in obs and gynae. But when I dropped out of uni and said I wanted to be a model, but I kind of wanted to be in a band, but essentially I wanted to be an actor, he said, “Life’s not a race to the far end. You’ve got time.””

ELLE: “Last question: What book turns you on?”