Jamie Dornan is probably best known for his chilling performance in The Fall and brooding role in the Fifty Shades franchise. But this week, we’ll get to see his lighter side in Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, a comedy movie written by and starring Bridesmaids duo Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo. It arrives Friday on VOD.

To whet your appetite, here are some things you might not know about Dornan (and some highlights from his memorable appearances on The Graham Norton Show).

1. Though he's from Northern Ireland, a province that's part of the U.K., he considers himself Irish rather than British.

"I just feel Irish — a lot of that's down to so many different reasons, mostly geography, that we are an island separate from the U.K.," he said last year, according to The Irish Post. "So how could you, why would you feel more connected to that other piece of land than you do to the piece of land that you are living on?"

2. None of his immediate family members are actors, but he is related to a bona fide Hollywood legend: Greer Garson.

Garson, Dornan's great aunt, still holds the record for the longest ever Oscar acceptance speech: she spoke for five minutes and 45 seconds when she collected her Best Actress trophy in 1945. You can watch a relatively brief excerpt below.

3. In terms of going through puberty, he says he was a "late developer."

This led him to do something very, very strange with a stage wig ahead of a teenage party, as he recalled — absolutely hilariously — on The Graham Norton Show.

We can’t fault Dornan’s brilliant storytelling, but his teenage judgement, on the other hand...

4. He's spoken candidly about suffering from depression, though he didn't realize it at the time.

"My mum died when I was 16. That was obviously a life-altering, insane, horrendous thing to happen," he recalled on the Out to Lunch with Jay Rayner podcast in 2019. "Then four of my mates killed themselves in a car crash when I was 17. I had a very rough couple of years and I guess I'm still dealing with both of [those] things today, every day."

Continuing, Dornan said that in the aftermath of these tragedies, there was a summer "where I'd go out a lot, drink, not really achieve anything."

"I dropped out of university and I was doing a marketing degree and no interest in any aspect of marketing, and I thought, 'Well f**k this, I'm going to leave,"" he added. "I remember having this idea that I wanted to change and I knew I wasn't on the right path and I needed to do something else. I got into an interview once and I was explaining what I got up to that summer, and the interviewer goes, 'So you're depressed,' and I was like, 'Oh s**t yeah.' I'd never seen it that way but I must have been depressed."

5. When he was 20, he appeared on a British reality TV show called Model Behaviour.

The prize was a year's contract with a leading modeling agency, and though Dornan didn't win, he was soon snapped up by a rival agency. He went on to forge an enormously successful modeling career, appearing in commercials for Dolce & Gabbana, Zara, Banana Republic, Dior, Calvin Klein, and Levi's Jeans.

As you'll see in this clip from Model Behaviour, one of the show's judges actually noticed straight away that he had "a bit of a Calvin Klein look" about him.

6. He missed out on a role in Game of Thrones.

During the Out to Lunch podcast, Dornan revealed that he met with the show's creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, "Way back before the show had even started, to see if I should be in it."

"We got on really well but later I got some feedback that they thought I was too young for some of the old parts and too old for some of the young parts. I thought, fair enough," he recalled. "Then the show came out and it was a load of guys who looked just like me! So I was like, ‘Oh right...’ They just didn’t like me obviously. I would have loved to have been in it."

7. There's a reason he prefers to wear a beard — and it harks back to his teenage years.

He told The Guardian in 2014: "I didn’t do particularly well with girls at school. I was always very young-looking. And my sister’s friends would always say: ‘You’re so cute.’ I f**king hated that. If you are a skinny, baby-faced teenager, the last thing you want to hear is that you’re cute.”

The beard, therefore, was his way of making himself look less "baby-faced." "I feel uncomfortable without it," he added. "I find myself moving differently. I don’t like myself without a beard.”

8. Before his acting career took off, he was one half of a folk duo called Sons of Jim.

Here they are performing their song "Fairytale" on Northern Irish TV.

And Dornan hasn't given up on singing entirely. He recorded a version of Paul McCartney's "Maybe I'm Amazed" for the Fifty Shades Freed soundtrack, and it's actually very decent.

9. He's a keen amateur golfer, and a pretty good one too.

Here he is holing an incredible putt during a pro-am tournament at iconic Scottish golf course St Andrews.

10. And finally, his sexy emerging-from-the-sea moment in Fifty Shades Freed wasn't quite as sexy as it looked.

Dornan explained all on The Graham Norton Show in his endearingly self-deprecating way.

Are you a fan of Jamie Dornan's acting and hilarious chat show anecdotes?