Free Fifty Shades of Jamie Dornan by Louise Ford Page B

to emerge of the pair walking hand in hand, their heads bowed and faces contorted with stress as they tried to make it across the muddy festival arena without getting in harm’s way. The media interest had become so intrusive that Jamie no longer wanted to leave their camper van. It was depressingly clear that leading a normal life with Keira as his girlfriend was now out of the question.
    Remembering that period of time, Keira told
Vogue
magazine in 2012, ‘I literally had no life outside of acting, and I just wanted to go off and not be “on” all the time, not be photographed. I once went to the Glastonbury Music Festival and was completely surrounded by packs of paparazzi the entire time, so I ended up sitting in a trailer, unable to go out.’
    When they eventually ventured out to a VIP bash for a friend’s birthday away from the prying eyes of the press, two drunkenpartygoers launched themselves onto the pair, determined to make their lives miserable by shining torches in their eyes and mocking Keira’s accent. ‘It was an invitation-only event but somehow these two drunk Danish guys managed to get in. Everyone had been having a great night until they arrived and Keira and Jamie were acting more lovey-dovey than ever,’ a partygoer remembered. ‘For some reason they picked on Keira and seemed hell-bent on getting a reaction. They were taking the p*** out of her voice and being extremely loud and annoying.
    ‘Keira smiled and tolerated them at first, but when they talked so loudly over her conversation, she started looking daggers at them. After the torch shining incident and the rude way they were teasing her about her posh voice it all got too much.’
    Keira and Jamie left the party to go to a nearby bar but the two men followed and, in a menacing move, sat at a table opposite them. ‘She could probably sense a confrontation brewing so she grabbed Jamie and left,’ a friend recalled. ‘She made the best of the rest of the weekend – but this definitely put a dampener on things.’
    As soon as they returned to London, Jamie and Keira were seen recovering at London’s swanky eatery Nobu, where they indulged in comfort food and some much-needed romantic time out. ‘They were holding hands over the table in a discreet section. But there was no mistaking the look of love. They were laughing so much it was heart-warming,’ an onlooker told a newspaper.
    However, behind the scenes, all was not well. Jamie was shaken by the experience and his hatred of the press had alreadytaken root. Keira also openly admitted that she wasn’t the easiest person to live with, as she worried incessantly about the cinema releases of her two latest films,
Domino
and
Pride and Prejudice.
‘I’m naturally pessimistic. I don’t get carried away with things. I can be a moody cow,’ she revealed.
    Acting had at that point devoured her life and several years later she admitted that the time when she was dating Jamie was incredibly stressful. ‘I wish I hadn’t been [such a hard worker]. Life would have been so much easier,’ Keira told
Harper’s Magazine
. ‘I was spending so much time being neurotic and beating myself up that I thought actually, if I didn’t, I might get further by just going, “Oh, f**k it”.’
    Instead, it was her relationship that took the hit.
    Jamie and Keira finally split in August 2005. Traditionalist Jamie could no longer cope with her fame and they had started to argue about the fact that he was struggling to accept Keira being the breadwinner. ‘There is a big pressure when you go out with someone like Keira. You can feel a bit second-rate and that’s what started to happen. It’s not like I was bringing the bread to the table – and that can start to affect everything,’ he said. ‘The man is meant to be the Alpha in the relationship on the money and power front and clearly I was not. You feel you have to be dominant in other areas and that leads to problems. If the person with you in a