Jamie Dornan has opened up about the heartache he still feels after losing his mother when he was a teen.
The actor lost his mother to pancreatic cancer 20 years ago and explained that the pain never goes away.
Speaking about the time around her death, he told Press Association: “I look back on that time and see it in a very blurry way.”
“I was very young, I was 14 when my mum got diagnosed and had just turned 16 when she died.
“Every kid at that age is naive, I felt like I was particularly young and naive at that time.
The Once Upon a Time actor also revealed that it changed him and forced him to mature quickly.
“I was a wee bit behind compared to my mates growing up, but I had to grow up pretty fast after that.
“It has an ever-evolving effect on me, that loss, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”
Now 36, Jamie says the tragic loss still affects him every day in different ways, and that he knows he’s not the only one in this situation.
“I feel like every single day it has an effect on me in ways which I am aware of and some ways I think I am not aware of.
“But, I am not alone in that, lots of people have lost people that are very dear to them at a young age.
“That’s the sad thing about this illness particularly, it seems to get people young, who often have very young families.”
Fondly remembering his mother, Jamie also said she would have loved the social side of her son’s fame.
“My mum was a very glamorous person and probably would have liked that side of things,” he said.
“I would have been able to take her to LA, and go to premieres and that sort of stuff – it’s all the stuff I hate about the job funnily enough. The stuff I can’t stand but my mum would have loved it.
“She would have been very tickled by the fact I make a career out of this weird thing that I do.
“Hopefully there is some world where she has an awareness of it.”
The actor was speaking with his dad James and his sister Jess at The Mater hospital in Belfast this week about families affected by pancreatic cancer.
He is also a patron of NIPanC which work with pancreatic cancer sufferers in Northern Ireland.
“I just don’t think anything like this existed, on such a level (when my mum was ill),” he said.
“It would have been fantastic to speak to other people going through the same sort of awful situation that we found ourselves in.”
Jamie has often spoken about his love for his mother and how her untimely death affects him.
