by Louise Ford
‘But rarely did I have to actually deal with cancer professionally. When I was thirty-four my wonderful dad died of cancer at the age of sixty-two. And when I was fifty, my similarly aged fantastic wife died the same way,’ he said.
Professor Dornan, as is the case for any other patient, had to follow the usual protocol for getting the right diagnosis, with blood tests and a bone marrow biopsy to determine the exact nature of the disease. Initial tests proved that it was indeed leukaemia, a cancer of the cells in the bone marrow. These white blood cells deep in the bone – known as blasts or leukaemia cells – are not formed normally and multiply. As well as feeling tired and getting anaemia, symptoms include bleeding and bruising problems, and having an increased risk of infection.
His self-diagnosis had been spot-on and Jim found himself joining the 2,750 people diagnosed with the disease in the UK each year. As if that wasn’t enough to take in, he was told that it looked like an aggressive form of the cancer, meaning that it could be potentially impossible to treat. Jamie’s father began to prepare himself for the fact that he may die within a matter of months. ‘I went into the hospital thinking I may never come out again […],’ Jim said. ‘Initially they over-diagnosed it and thought I had a more serious type of leukaemia than I had.’
However by the following day, and thanks to further explorations, it was discovered that the cancer could at least be controlled – even if it was incurable. ‘It was Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia (CLL),’ he said. ‘It made sense now. After all I ate well and was not losing red cells […] simple as that. After a few early hiccups the diagnosis was confirmed.’
CLL is different to other leukaemias in that it tends to develop very slowly and patients can have it for months or years without showing many symptoms. ‘Within twenty-four hours the doctor came in and said, “Hey, it’s not the leukaemia we thought you had, we’ve done some tests and it’s called CLL,” which can kill people but can run along very quietly at the bottom of the barrel.’ It was indeed a better prognosis than they had previously thought but Jamie, along with his sisters, was told the terrible news that there was no cure.
To make matters worse, Jamie’s step-grandfather – Samina’s father – was also diagnosed with leukaemia at the same time. Unlike Jim, though, no treatment could curb his disease and he later died. ‘Sadly at the time I got my leukaemia, Samina’s father got it too but he got a bad one,’ he later said. ‘Very sadly it killed him … He was a great man, a very honest, a very moral man.’
It was an incredibly stressful time for the whole family but, being a doctor, Jim knew that there would be a good and a bad way to handle the situation. Rather than wallow in fear and self-pity, worrying about the road ahead looking less than easy, he decided that the way forward was to immediately strike up close relationships with the medical staff treating him. ‘To cut a longish story short, I got very appropriate treatment and formed a “bromance” with my oncologist! … As you do!!!’
Consultant haematologist Dr Robert Cuthbert at Belfast City Hospital, who was particularly crucial in getting him the right treatment, was one of the doctors with whom he formed a close bond. The two medical experts, along with a team of cancer specialists, put together his treatment plan and it clearly helped to make the process a lot more bearable. The pair of them started to discuss what therapies were available to him and Jim insisted he wanted to try out medication that wasn’t usually prescribed in the Belfast hospital. He was determined to control the cancer and stay in charge of the disease so that he could continue being a doctor, husband and devoted father for many years to come. ‘Now it hit me pretty hard and my doctor said “Don’t worry I’ll just give you these tablets” and they were what we were handing out when I was at medical school and I said “No, you’re going to have to come back with something sexier than that,”’ Professor Dornan explained some years later. ‘So he did go away and make a phone call and came back and said, “Okay, we are going to do that, that and that.”’
Blood transfusions followed, as well as some intense antibody-based cancer treatments. Although the Republic of Ireland had been issuing leukaemia patients with the revolutionary therapy for some years, the NHS at the time – in 2005 – wasn’t prescribing the life-saving therapy because it hadn’t yet been approved by the regulator, The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). Frustrated that it wasn’t offered as a matter of course, Jim insisted on trying it anyway to pave the way for future CLL patients. ‘It’s really frustrating that only last year did NICE come back and say yes that’s the treatment people with this kind of leukaemia should be having,’ he commented. ‘Yet at that time I was the first person in Northern Ireland to have it. I wasn’t a guinea pig, in the Republic of Ireland everybody had been getting it, but the way the British Health Service works is that one: “Does NICE approve it” and two: “Can we afford it?” before it actually goes out there, so I have a problem with NICE actually because I don’t think they should make those decisions.’
Much to his son Jamie’s relief, Jim immediately started the new treatment using ‘monocle antibodies’. The clever therapy uses man-made versions of immune system proteins, or antibodies, which attach to the cancer cells and kill them. The medication, given by injection, is effectively a second immune system designed specifically to attack the leukaemia. As the weeks turned into months, slowly but surely the lifelong treatment was keeping Professor Dornan’s cancer under control and at bay.
Jamie’s father was in remission but ultimately the cancer could return. At last he was getting the right treatment but the world-famous doctor admits he was terrified in the wake of getting diagnosed with cancer, mainly because the medics treating him in Belfast didn’t believe he had many years left to live. ‘During one of my early treatment cycles I asked one of the young buck oncologists “Do you think I’ll see 80?”
‘In truth I expected him to say “Oh now, none of us know how long we have, and there are new developments every day. Why, I remember a man …”
‘Instead of which he just looked at me, and then looked at the floor and said nought. As his head went down, my heart went down.’
Hard as it may have been, the Dornan family had to get back to work, trying to function as normally as possible in tough circumstances. Jamie continued visiting his dad at the luxurious home in Cultra, County Down, which he shared with his devoted wife of four years Samina. Nothing was put on hold: Jamie’s stepmother carried on overseeing a revamp of the family home in between her career in medicine and their busy social life, while Professor Dornan, remarkably, still remained focused on his work. Delivering babies every week was a reminder indeed of the wonders of life, and being immersed in such a rewarding and life-affirming environment helped him to forget his own troubles.
Behind closed doors, however, he now admits that he was very frightened of dying and faced an uncertain future until his job took him to the Arab state of Oman, where he was examining postgraduate doctors some months later. Thankfully, he finally found a medic who put him at ease. ‘I met a fantastic Iraqi haematological oncologist who had been driven out of Birmingham by racist neighbours. He was, and is, a gentleman. I was sitting having a coffee with him and the subject of my cancer came up.
‘I was hugely buoyed by his positivity. So much so that I felt strong enough to ask him the same question,’ Jim explained.
Unlike the young doctor back in Belfast, this medic believed that, thanks to the wonders of modern medicine, there was every chance that he could live for decades. ‘His answer? “I don’t know whether you’ll make eighty or not, but I doubt if it’ll be CLL that’ll kill you.” What a great answer,’ he remembered. ‘Of course I had, and indeed have, no right to live to eighty, but I do have the right to hope to live to eighty.’
With renewed positivity, Professor Dornan returned home to Belfast determined not to let his cancer blight his life and that of his wife and children. As the months turned into years, it turned out that the Iraqi doctor had been
right all along, and Jim found that he could continue leading a normal life, with the leukaemia under control.
Sunday roast dinners with the family – a favourite with the Dornans – rounds of golf at the weekend and much-loved holidays in South Africa with a group of old friends were all back on the cards again. This spectacular country had long been a favourite with the doctor after his work had taken him to hospitals and conferences in Cape Town; it had become a place he liked to return year-on-year with pals for a cathartic trip away.
His zest for life was indeed infectious and Jamie – sharing his dad’s hope for the future while remaining stoically philosophical – plunged headlong into his music career. ‘My dad was diagnosed a year ago. It’s just one of those things. He’s alive and away in South Africa on a boys’ trip. He’s in remission. I kind of think if all this happens before I’m twenty-three then the road ahead will be quite smooth.’
Luckily for the young and ambitious Jamie, the following years would indeed be filled with fun and fortune, and his father would still be there shouting him along from the sidelines.
His father, meanwhile, admitted that there was no stopping him, as he gave up his job in the NHS to go into private practice despite heading towards retirement age. ‘I have a very fertile mind and I always have a few ideas and I like working on them,’ he explained in 2013. Speaking about his cancer, he added, ‘I’m fine now; I just had a check-up the other day but when you come face-to-face with your own mortality, it is a wake-up call.’
Nine years after discovering his cancer, Professor Dornan was still in ‘remission’ and at the time of writing, in 2014, Jamie’s father was still going strong. ‘I’m in remission but I prefer to think of it as “cured”,’ he said. ‘If it returns, we will deal with that when it comes as a second issue. I wish the oncologists would realise that we often think like that.’
Jim was still mindful, though, that his fortune could change at any point. ‘I think I’m at peace with myself and also preparing myself that the end could come at any time – I think that’s what comes from having a near-death experience. So I’m very aware of that now, so I’m not burning the candle at both ends although some of my friends still think I am,’ he said. ‘I’m still a driven man and I still want to change the world but I’m also with the realisation the bad news could still come – but maybe it won’t come to anything.’
Back in 2005, though, and with his cancer treatment in full swing, it was business as usual for the whole family. ‘Jamie’s one of the nicest people I know,’ his father said proudly just before hearing the news that his model son was on the cusp of getting a record deal that year. ‘He is getting on with it and is enjoying himself. I’m incredibly proud.’
With his ever-supportive father’s backing, it was now time to conquer those ambitions on his ‘to do’ list: Jamie had a music career to crack and a modelling career to enjoy, and now more than ever he was determined that nothing would stand in the way of him becoming a world-famous actor. Remarkably, and thanks to the wonders of modern medicine, the most important man in Jamie’s life was going to be there every step of the way, rejoicing in his successes and catching him at every fall.
Chapter Eight
THE GOLDEN TORSO
Jamie was now mixing with the rich and very famous as the darling of the modelling industry. The man on everyone’s lips was said to be commanding six-figure sums for his contracts and was dubbed ‘the male Kate Moss’. Everyone wanted a piece of him.
Jamie was quick to acknowledge at the time that gay men, from photographers such as Carter Smith to designers like Hedi Slimane from Dior, were playing a large role in accelerating his career. He was adjusting well to the heightened interest from males and females, both inside and outside the industry, that such a job brought his way.
Fashion designer Matthew Williamson was one of the many who openly drooled over the handsome model, confiding to a magazine, ‘My secret crush is Jamie Dornan, but he knows that – it’s not secret.’ Whereas some straight men may have felt uncomfortable by the public adoration, Jamie revelled in it. ‘I just love the attention,’ he told gay magazine Out in 2006. ‘I don’t really mind where it comes from.’
‘I find it hard to believe people are actually that interested in me, I suppose it’s the Irish charm that gets me the jobs,’ he added.
It was fair to say that although most wannabe pop stars would be busking to earn a crust or living on the breadline as they tried to carve out a bona fide music career, lack of money was no issue for Jamie. He was certainly no struggling musician, as he kick-started 2006 with yet another cash injection thanks to new and lucrative modelling contracts with clothing giants H&M and Gap.
With brooding stares now down to a fine art, Jamie appeared in the glossy H&M print campaign dressed in khaki and posing with waif-like blondes on a beach for their spring/summer 2006 collection.
His bank balance was boosted further when Gap snapped him up to join a line-up of faces promoting their ‘Age Wash Denim’ jeans. It was another opportunity to mix with the fashion elite, as he hung out with prestigious Dutch photography duo Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin who had been hired by the high street brand to take a collection of slick, arty shots for the Gap campaign. The pair, whose commercial success was linked to their lavish adverts for a string of luxury fashion houses, including Yves Saint Laurent, Givenchy and Jean Paul Gaultier, met Jamie at New York’s Pier 59 Studios, along with a team of top stylists.
Jamie was in his element; although he still hadn’t warmed to the hours of posing, he revelled in the interesting characters he met on the job. Moreover, Jamie could now call New York his second home and the job wasn’t far from his apartment. At just twenty-four years of age, Jamie had his own pad in both the Big Apple and London – the ultimate testament to his jet-setting lifestyle and modelling success.
And it wasn’t just the fashion industry that was raving about the young model. Much to Jamie’s surprise, the UK press was also maintaining an interest in his personal and professional life despite his broken ties with Keira. ‘Find time for a private perv over Jamie Dornan the Belfast-born model in the Dior campaign and the new Gap and H&M ads,’ cooed a journalist in a fashion special on Dornan in the Sunday Times. ‘The brooding beauty used to date Keira but now poor love he’s single and heartbroken – cue an X-rated fantasy about how you would cheer up the poor love.’
Not that Jamie needed any cheering up – it was now that he was enjoying one of the biggest contracts of his life: starring alongside Kate Moss in Calvin Klein’s new magazine and billboard campaign. He had posed for the fashion house in 2004 and they were back for more of the Irish charmer. Stunning Kate had been handed £500,000 in the deal by the designers who had made her a superstar in 1992. The move to hire her again, however, was deemed massively controversial at the time, since the catwalk beauty was waiting to hear if she would face criminal charges over alleged cocaine abuse. The supermodel had been snapped the previous year snorting a white powder in a recording studio with her then bad-boy singer boyfriend Pete Doherty. The salacious newspaper pictures had prompted a number of high-profile fashion clients, including Burberry, Chanel and H&M, to drop the then thirty-two-year-old from some of their campaigns.
When news came that Calvin Klein had signed up Jamie and Kate as the faces of their new jeans collection, the supermodel and mum-of-one was waiting to see if the Crown Prosecution Service had enough evidence to charge her with drug abuse. However, Calvin Klein campaign creative director Fabien Baron was adamant that they had made the right choice in their casting. ‘Kate and Calvin Klein have a long history together and it felt natural to reunite them for this new Jeans campaign,’ he said in a statement. As it turned out, Kate wasn’t prosecuted due to lack of evidence and her multimillion-pound modelling career was back on track.
The photo shoot itself was incredible and, despite the size of the campaign in terms of coverage and the extraordinary fees handed to both Jamie and Kate, it took jus
t two short days to shoot. Working alongside Kate, Jamie got an enviable insight into what life was like for one of the world’s biggest supermodels. In the raunchy black-and-white shots, the good-looking pair posed in a variety of sensual poses, both topless and in dark jeans.
Many had the co-stars down as best pals – and even lovers – after working together, but Jamie was quick to admit that despite appearing together on billboards across the world, they literally spent just a handful of hours in each other’s company.
It turned out to be an unforgettable experience for Jamie; as well as starring opposite Kate, he got to work with well-respected fashion photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott. Known as ‘Mert and Marcus’, the pair were famous for their portraits of sophisticated, powerful women – including Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Victoria Beckham and Lady Gaga – as well as for their work for magazines and fashion labels. ‘The difference between us and other photographers is that we care a lot about appearance,’ Alas explained. ‘We spend most of the time in the make-up and hairstyling rooms.’
And this high profile ad was no exception. Jamie was seriously pampered and preened for the shoot hosted at Jack Studios in New York. ‘As well as the usual hair and face make-up’, Jamie said, ‘what I do remember about the Calvin Klein ads was a lot of people running me down with dark, oily tanning stuff, I mean, I’m a white Irish guy, it was a problem.’
Once in the studio, Jamie’s co-star was charming and the pair got on brilliantly. Barriers had to be broken down immediately, with Kate wrapping her legs round Jamie’s waist and pressing her naked torso up against his back for the erotic shots. ‘She was really a lovely person – very nice and more shy than you’d expect,’ he said. ‘But when you’re working with someone who is top of their profession it’s a real thrill.’