Actor Charlie Hunnam has elaborated on why he bailed on the infamous role of Christian Grey in the hotly anticipated Fifty Shades of Grey movie.
When it was announced that the lead actor in the title role of Fifty Shades of Grey was pulling out, two months after being cast, it was thought to be a highly unusual move given how sought-after the role was. Fans of the book had speculated for months over who would land the sexually charged role of Christian Grey and many were overjoyed to hear that it would be the hunky Sons of Anarchy actor Charlie Hunnam, 34.
So why then did he choose to leave? Charlie told Us Weekly: “I wouldn’t have signed up in the first place if I didn’t want to do it. It was a really, really difficult time in my life. I had already been attached to Crimson Peak for about 14 months, which I said, I was going to do with Guillermo [del Toro].”
Charlie said that it was a meeting with director Sam Taylor-Johnson that convinced him to play the role of E.L. James’ kinky billionaire character: “Sam and I just fell in love, creatively,” Charlie recalled. “We started talking about this thing and I just felt so excited. I fell in love with the character and started seeing him and becoming intoxicated, which is the way I work: I find a character I love and I start thinking about it all the time.”
So Charlie insisted it wasn’t some kind of moral choice, he was just on the verge of a breakdown from playing three different characters at the same time. “I was going to finish [filming] Sons at like 11 p.m. Friday night, get on the plane Saturday morning to Vancouver for Fifty, missing the whole first week of rehearsal and start shooting Monday morning,” Charlie said. “And I was going to shoot that film, wrap that on the Wednesday and the following Monday I was going to start shooting Crimson Peak in Toronto. I just had like … frankly, something of a nervous breakdown.”
At the time that Charlie pulled out, the studios producing the film released a statement: “The filmmakers of Fifty Shades of Grey and Charlie Hunnam have agreed to find another male lead, given Hunnam’s immersive TV schedule, which is not allowing him time to adequately prepare for the role of Christian Grey.”
Others speculated that he didn’t want to end up being typecast or land the sort of attention that Robert Pattinson has received since his Twilight stint. Charlie also spoke to Us Weekly at the time of pulling out of the project, when he said: “I just said, ‘I can’t … I can’t …’, I really didn’t want to fail on such a grand scale, and I just couldn’t transition from Jax Teller to Christian Grey in 48 hours. It’s painful because I loved the character and I wanted to do it. I’m also a man of my word.”
So instead of Charlie, film-maker instead cast the handsome Northern-Irish actor Jamie Dornan, 32, to star alongside Dakota Johnson in the female lead role. Check out a first look at the trailer here, which is reportedly the most viewed trailer of 2014. The new film is scheduled for release early 2015.
