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(photo from cmcandrewphoto on Instagram)
Jamie and Millie Dornan ANDREW SIMS FOR THE TIMES
When I speak to Millie Dornan, she has just woken up looking like someone who has spent two hours in hair and make-up. Clutching a milky coffee, she’s bare-faced, her streaky blonde hair unbrushed, wearing a baggy old pink T-shirt. This would be a tricky look to pull off if you were a 22-year-old supermodel; Dornan is a 39-year-old mother of three. To add insult to injury, she is bathed in early-morning California sunlight, while in London it is dark and chucking it down. Luckily, I’m not bitter. Oh, and she’s also married to the actor Jamie Dornan. Did I mention that? Well, there you are. Remember that envy is an unedifying emotion, and unworthy of you.
“I feel very lucky,” she says needlessly, referring to her location, not her husband. “It’s crazy the difference the guaranteed sun makes to your mood. It’s not even the sun — for me, it’s the sky. In the UK I live in the countryside and at this time of year it’s a proper test of strength and reserves because it’s just so tough and muddy and cold. Coming here has felt like a real joy.”
In her professional life as a successful composer, she’s Amelia Warner. In her private life, she’s Millie Dornan, and seeing as we’re talking today about swimming, not composing, then Dornan it is. Specifically, we’re talking about her love for wild swimming. Half the population these days seems intent on throwing itself into the North Sea with tedious regularity. Anyone who’s tried it — including Matt Hancock, who was photographed last week swimming in the Serpentine in London — knows that one of the main problems isn’t so much getting in, but getting out. If you’ve stood shivering and damp on a freezing riverbank trying to pull on jeans, this is a familiar problem, albeit one that the now ubiquitous Dryrobes — essentially rather unflattering parkas for changing under — are supposed to solve. The good news is that Dornan and her friend, business partner and fellow swimmer Daniela Bohling have come up with a new solution. It is, they say, flattering for everyone and smart enough to take you straight from the riverbank to meeting a friend for lunch. The bad news is that it’s a boiler suit.
“It really does suit everyone,” Dornan insists, as I look dubious from 5,000 miles away. “It’s incredibly flattering, because it’s got this high, nipped-in waist. The crotch is really low so you’re not going to get stuck, and it has one zip. I wasn’t sure if it would work on people with curves or a bust, but it really does. We designed it as a functional, technical piece, but we’re surprised by how amazing it looks. I used to go swimming then meet someone afterwards looking like a crazy person with all these clothes on. It was like the Michelin man showing up.”
Lightweight and with a weatherproof outer shell, the Wylding suit packs small enough to fit into a backpack for far-flung swims — over the summer Dornan went swimming in remote spots in Wales — and is lined with thermal microfleece, which wicks away moisture. It was born, she says, of all the times she and her friends stood on the riverbank trying to get dressed with numb hands and wet skin. “It was always just a real faff. We’d be standing there shivering and having the same conversation about how the worst bit is trying to get your clothes on after.”
Dornan started swimming a couple of years ago in the rivers and lakes near her Cotswolds home, in response to an open invitation from an acquaintance on Instagram. Until then, she was the sort of girl who would stand on the edge of a swimming pool for 15 minutes trying to summon the courage to get in.
“I thought, ‘F*** it,’ ” she remembers of that first time, “and it was brilliant. I didn’t know anybody and suddenly I was taking off my clothes and getting into this inky black freezing water. Everyone was squealing, but it was empowering and bonding and fun. We all felt so buzzed and high from it afterwards. It’s good to do stuff that pushes you to your edges, to do things that surprise yourself. I didn’t think I could do it, but I did, and then I just wanted to do it again and again.”
Dornan and her fellow school-gate mums, of which Bohling was one, started swimming regularly. They would flash their swimming costumes from under their clothes at each other as they dropped their kids off, as a secret sign that they were going swimming. Dornan found herself stopping the car randomly if she thought there might be somewhere to swim, hopping over fences and looking on Google Maps to see if the land was private and swimmable. Her first question whenever the family went anywhere, at home or abroad, was: “Where can I swim?”
“Even five years ago I would have said, ‘No thanks.’ I think it’s just getting older and being more interested in pushing myself. It’s really good for building confidence and it definitely has a noticeable effect on your mental health. If you have low moods, or you’re feeling a bit down, it really does help.”
Last year, she was swimming near Adelaide in Australia while Jamie was filming The Tourist. It was winter when they were there, so the sea was pretty cold, but as far as she was concerned, not cold enough. The Atlantic coast of Ireland at Christmas, on the other hand? Now you’re talking. She and Jamie spent Christmas there — he was brought up with his two older sisters on the outskirts of Belfast — and swam every day. “Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, we swam a lot over Christmas. He enjoys it, especially when he’s at home in Ireland, he’d jump in the sea with me — him and his sister, we all swam. It was really fun and really, really cold.”
Millie and Daniela CHRIS MCANDREW FOR THE TIMES
The couple have three daughters, Dulcie, eight, Elva, five, and Alberta, two, who all think she’s bonkers.
“They go, ‘Oh, Mummy’s going to swim’ . . . but they get it, I think. They’re kind of up for it, but not in January.”
Dornan was born in Merseyside, the only child of two actors. She was brought up in Notting Hill, where she honed her eclectic style buying “weird second-hand things” every Friday at Portobello Market. She’s still got a lot of them, but they don’t get worn much any more. She lives a jeans-and-T-shirts life now. She started out as an actress, starring in the BBC’s production of Lorna Doone in 2000, but since childhood has spent her spare time writing music. Her compositions have reached No 1 on the iTunes classical music chart, and she has scored several films, including 2018’s Mary Shelley, starring Elle Fanning. She met Jamie at a party in LA and they’ve been married since 2013. They live a resolutely unstarry life in the Cotswolds, where the children go to school, and a world away from dressing up for red carpets.
“I feel that we’re good at keeping things at a level of normality, and as long as we’re all together it’s very simple for us. I’m definitely more comfortable on a dog-walk than being glammed up.”
At home they’re surrounded by animals, although rather fewer of them than there used to be. The goats had to be sent to an animal sanctuary because they kept escaping, and the chickens were eaten.
“It was really sad, I loved those chickens. Apparently it wasn’t a fox that killed them, it was a badger. We’re really depleted. We told the kids they’d escaped to a better life and now they’re in some chicken land somewhere with their friends.”
They enrolled the kids in a school in Australia while Jamie was filming The Tourist because they were there for five months, but they’re only in LA until spring, so the children are being home schooled. “We’re used to the travel,” she says. “It’s part of our lives. We’ve got it all down to a good routine, and as they get older I’m sure we’ll make different decisions.”
First on the agenda today, a few days after they landed — and the first when they didn’t all wake up before dawn — is to enrol them at the local library. She wants to try her hand at surfing, and take the girls to flea markets in LA for a rummage, as she used to do in Portobello. She turns 40 in June, but couldn’t care less.
“I’m really excited about turning 40. It seems to be a really good time — you’re hopefully just coming through having small children and everything starts opening up again. It feels like there’s a lot more space. I’m really looking forward to it. I’ll definitely mark it somehow.”
Perhaps she could jump into a particularly cold river. That might be nice.
“Hmm,” she says, considering her options. “The sea does get pretty cold here, it’s the Pacific, so I’ll get a bit of a fix. But maybe I need to get some sort of ice-bath wheelie bin situation going on here.”
Millie Dornan with her Wylding co-founder Daniela Bohling in the brand’s boiler suits, £160, wylding.co.uk CHRIS MCANDREW FOR THE TIMES
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/millie-dornan-interview-jamie-wylding-32t6qk0gl
W Y L D I N G
Remember… it was always just a real faff. We’d be standing there shivering and having the same conversation about how the worst bit is trying to get your clothes on after. — Millie Dornan (Amelia Warner)
