The Fall: Can season three maintain the suspense?

Jamie Dornan: I stalked a woman on the Tube to prepare for TV role

4 April 2015

Jamie Dornan has admitted to stalking a woman on the London Underground to prepare for his role as a serial killer on the television show The Fall.

"Can we get arrested for this? Hold on ... this is a really bad reveal," the Fifty Shades of Grey star told the Los Angeles Times. "I, like, followed a woman off the train one day to see what it felt like to pursue someone like that."

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He said he kept his distance, following her off the train and out of the station. "It felt kind of exciting, in a really sort of dirty way," he said "I'm sort of not proud of myself. But I do honestly think I learned something from it."

The former Calvin Klein model from Northern Ireland faced an immediate backlash, with campaigners arguing his actions were tantamount to abuse.

The LA Times described the move as "maybe borderline illegal" and even Hollywood blogger Perez Hilton admitted that the revelation was "fifty shades of creepy".

Although critically acclaimed, The Fall has been accused of glamorising violence against women. One of the show's writers said it "lingered too intimately on the killer's brutal crimes, Sky News reports.

Fifty Shades of Grey, in which Dornan plays a "kinky" billionaire, is also no stranger to controversy. Domestic violence campaigners said that the film was a manual for sexual torture and even BDSM practitioners argued that it glorified abusive relationships.

In a recent interview with The Guardian, Dornan admitted: "I consider myself quite light-hearted, pretty easy-going, and I keep playing sick psychopath bastards. It kinda worries me sometimes how comfortable I am in that zone."