“Sure,” says Dornan. “You wear it, and it shapes you, and colours you forever, to lose your mother at such a young age, and life will never be the same again – but you can’t lead with it. I am probably a much stronger person as a result. I was young and naive and I had to grow up really fast. I had to find a strength and resilience that I didn’t know I had.”

Another thing he inherited from his dad, he says, is that he never gets hangovers. “Despite being the last man to leave the party and the first up in the morning,” his father seemed immune. Dornan, too, should have a hangover today, having stayed up late last night with friends knocking back tequila. You’d think he might at least be worn out from being so good-­looking. But instead he seems fresh and springy, as we take our walk on the common, “beautiful even on a s—- day like today”, with its lovely views of the Stroud valley.

He and his wife, the composer and musician Amelia Warner, moved here several years ago after falling in love with the area. “We used to come pretending we needed to get away from the stresses of London, even though we didn’t even have kids and life was not that stressful.” When they did have children, they had an excuse to move permanently, and three years ago, they bought the house they live in now, on the edge of a village. “There’s two pubs and a postbox – it’s not a metropolis. Every­one leaves you to it, no one is that interested in what you do – no paparazzi or any of that c–p.”

They have three children: ­Dulcie, 8, Elva, 5, and Alberta, 3. I ­wonder whether he’d make a film like Fifty Shades of Grey now, when there’s his daughters to consider?

“I can be a real cynic, and if it wasn’t me in the film, it’d be different. As my girls get older, will they have to field some awkward questions? Yeah! But will it have a damaging effect on them or my relationship with them? No.”