WHEN Jamie Dornan first started acting and moved to LA, he only wanted to do comedy.
Of course, life took a different path, and the Co Down-born star ended up playing "a psychopath" for three years when he landed the role of Paul Spector in hit BBC Two series, The Fall.
However, Dornan's latest role is a tense thriller which is also surprisingly funny. New BBC series The Tourist – written by Harry and Jack Williams (known for The Missing, Liar and Angela Black) – is set in the Australian outback, and starts dramatically.
We see Dornan (39) – whose character is known only as 'The Man' – driving along when he realises he's being pursued. In the end, his car tumbles off a ridge, and he wakes up injured in hospital, and with absolutely no idea who he is.
"It's very heightened and unreal at times, and the comedy is often found in the darkest of places," reflects charismatic Dornan, who's also known for playing Christian Grey in the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise.
"I thought that was really interesting, and just a challenge and a fresh take for me. So that's definitely why I was I was drawn to it."
The Holywood-born father-of-three, who's married to musician Amelia Warner, notes: "I don't understand the point of doing this for a career if you don't want to explore every facet that the job serves up – all the different mediums of it, all the different genres, all the different challenges of it. And I love a challenge in life. Always have, always will.
"I love the exploration that this job allows, and I feel like I've spent the last eight years or so making the most of that, and taking stuff on that isn't the same as the previous – and I plan to do that for as long as I'm allowed a career."
Other characters in The Tourist include Helen (Danielle Macdonald), a local beat cop who helps The Man try and figure out who he is, waitress Luci (Shalom Brune-Franklin), who The Man meets at a local diner, matter-of-fact detective inspector Lachlan Rogers (Damon Herriman) and a mysterious American man named Billy (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson).
The six-part story has the theme of self-discovery at its core, as The Man starts questioning who he is and who he has been in the past – and it's also adrenaline-filled with plenty of big stunt scenes, as the script takes many twists and turns.
The Williams' goal was to try and do something different. Dornan says the pair – who are behind production company Two Brothers Pictures – "often play with tone in quite an obscure, refreshing way, but they've really ramped it up for this one".
The actor also liked the intrigue of the show – the fact that all the characters have big secrets, especially his.
"Usually, in the opening few pages of a script, you get a sense of who this person is – the life they have, the family they have, the job they have, what their intentions are. But with this, there is none of that. It's very exciting to have all of that revealed to me, as it will be revealed to the audience."
Dornan had been to Australia before, to visit friends for New Year's Eve in 2009. But Sydney is obviously very different from the filming locations for The Tourist, where there were snakes, sandstorms, and extreme temperatures on either end of the scale.
"Legitimately, in the mornings and the evenings towards the end, it was cold. And you're dealing with the isolation of the Outback – we were four hours outside of Adelaide, with not much to do. But there was a pub and a pool table – good pub."
One of the things the star loved about the series was how ambitious it is, which you get a sense of from the very start of the first episode.
"In a very heavily saturated world of television, of big television, of expensive television, with huge ambitions across the board, you want something that pops, that gets people's attention – the opening of this hopefully does," he teases.
"It's definitely paying homage to Steven Spielberg's Duel; I don't think Harry and Jack would shy away from that or mind me saying that.
"It puts you right bang into the middle of this madness, but this very beautiful sort of scape. And it was a challenge. The whole shoot was a challenge – it was the longest shoot I've ever done, and it was at times harsh."
They had a lot of time to shoot the opening sequence, with the stunt stuff alone lasting "days upon days".
"I was trying to do as much of that as I could and I got thrown around quite a lot I have to say – but I'm up for that," follows Dornan.
"But then a lot of the more beautiful drone stuff, where you can't see who's inside, that was stunt guys, and they worked really hard doing that to make sure I was able to do some quieter scenes.
"But it was definitely a challenge and it was right at the beginning when it was still hot – well, for me. I found it hot. It was the introduction to being out shooting in the Outback, just this massive sequence. It's a really fun, exciting opening to a series."
:: The Tourist starts on BBC One on New Year's Day
