Jamie Dornan Stalked a Woman to Prepare for His Role as a Serial Killer

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Variety's Actors on Actors: Emmy Edition presented by Autograph Collection Hotels - Day 2
Actor Jamie Dornan speaks during Variety Studio Actors on Actors presented by Autograph Collection Hotels on March 29, 2015 in Los Angeles.Joe Scarnici—Getty Images
By Megan Gibson

Many actors are asked about their so-called process or how they get into character for a certain role. Not so many actors are as candid as Jamie Dornan.

The 32-year-old Irish actor, who is best known for playing kinky billionaire Christian Grey in the recent adaptation 50 Shades of Grey, sat down with the Los Angeles Times to discuss his work on the television drama The Fall. In the series, which began in 2013, Dornan plays Paul Spector, a husband and father who murders women in his spare time. During the live chat, Dornan was asked how he prepared for such a brutal role and he copped to some down-right creepy behavior of his own, telling the Times:

“The first series, I did do a couple of things to try to get inside [his mind]. On the tube, which is our underground system” — Dornan began with his anecdote before stopping himself. “Can we get arrested for this? Hold on … this is a really bad reveal: I, like, followed a woman off the train one day to see what it felt like to pursue someone like that.”

Dornan said he kept his distance from his target, and once she reached her stop, lurked behind her for a couple of blocks.

He went on — as, we imagine, his publicist began hyperventilating — saying: “It felt kind of exciting, in a really sort of dirty way. I’m sort of not proud of myself. But I do honestly think I learned something from it, because I’ve obviously never done any of that. It was intriguing and interesting to enter that process of ‘what are you following her for?’ and ‘what are you trying to find out?”

Unsurprisingly, many women didn’t appreciate Dornan’s methods and took to Twitter to respond:

Read next: Fifty Shades of Grey Star Jamie Dornan Wants You to Know He Isn’t Really a Sick Psychopath

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