Irish actor Jamie Dornan has said he has been trying to get back into doing more comedy roles.

The 38-year-old has been seen on the small screen playing serial killer Paul Spector in The Fall and on the big screen playing Christian Grey in the film adaptations of EL James’s Fifty Shades books.

Speaking to ITV’s This Morning about a forthcoming comedy film which has been delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic, Dornan said: “I always thought that I would do comedy early on and then I played a psychopath and then nobody really thought of me in a comedic way. I’ve been trying to get back into that (comedy) a wee bit.”

The film, Barb And Star Go To Vista Del Mar, will see him feature alongside Bridesmaids actress Kristen Wiig.

Model Dornan said life in lockdown has been “challenging but massively rewarding”.

He told hosts Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford: “My kids rarely get me at home for four months without going away at all, they’ve never had that in their lives, and we have a rule – I never go more than two weeks without seeing them – but four months with just Daddy and Mummy there the whole time is just brilliant.”

The star joked about home-schooling: “Our eldest is six, which is kind of my level of understanding of education, so it kind of worked out quite well!”

Talking about another recent project, the film Endings, Beginnings, which was written by Drake Doremus and is semi-improvised, he said: “I’ve done a little bit of improv before, early on in my career, but not for a long time.

“Certainly not a whole movie’s worth, so it was quite an experience”.

Dornan joked that he thought about “running away” on his first night of filming.

He said: “I was so terrified. We were shooting a night shoot in the Valley in Studio City in LA and the first scene is the first time you see my character and (the characters of) Daphne and Frank. They had already been shooting for two weeks, but I was filming something else so I couldn’t shoot the first weeks.

“So everyone else was sort of in the groove of it and was sort of understanding the improv. And I came in not knowing anybody on the first night and I thought ‘What are the ramifications here, if I run?’ But I came to my senses.”

Divergent star Shailene Woodley plays Daphne, who gets caught in a love triangle with Dornan’s character Jack and Frank, played by Sebastian Stan.