Michelle Dockery has a lot to smile about. Her international hit show Downton Abbey released a Season 4 trailer, and she’s fairing much better in the love department than her onscreen character Lady Mary.
She debuted her new romance at the Venice Film Festival this weekend with a mystery man, who has now been identified as 31-year-old Irish financial PR executive John Dineen. The pair have been snapped kissing, holding hands, and canoodling all over the romantic Italian city.
According to the Daily Mail, they’ve been dating for a few weeks. His coworker at FTI Consulting told The DM: “He is very private and softly spoken but he has really been taken by Michelle. Friends have joked that they must have also been drawn together because of their Irish connections.” (Michelle’s dad is from Ireland.)
Michelle’s colleague Allen Leech, who plays Tom Branson, introduced the pair. Michelle, who is also 31, has previously dated British actor Joseph Millson, and American architect Trent Davies.
As for her role as Lady Mary, Michelle told The Sun that she relishes the role because it allows her to be a bitch, something she says she isn’t in real life. “Mary is a very different character to who I am and she can be incredibly mean — and I really love playing those moments when she is,” the actress recently told The Sun. “Yeah, it’s awful but I love being a bitch! I can be very shy but when I act I’m a complete extrovert and there is a kind of buzz about that and about losing control.
“That crazy, liberating thing of playing something that’s nothing like yourself — it’s what I love about it,” she says.” I’m not really a bitch, I’m very nice! But it’s those parts of ourselves that we’re afraid of that we don’t tap into as much and that’s what’s so enjoyable about being an actor.”
