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Charlie Hunnam Reveals Why He Quit '50 Shades of Grey'

FX's "Sons Of Anarchy" Premiere

Credit: Photo by Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic

At this point, fans of 50 Shades of Grey have accepted Jamie Dornan as the popular lead character Christian Grey, but the actor had to work hard to get the role. In fact, originally, the part went to Charlie Hunnam, who dropped out without much reason less than two months after casting news broke.

Now, the actor is finally opening up about why he couldn’t take part in the highly-anticipated movie — he was simply just too busy! “I wouldn’t have signed up in the first place if I didn’t want to do it,” he told Moviefone. “It was a really, really difficult time in my life.”

After gushing about how he fell in love with the character of Christian Grey, Charlie admitted that squeezing the movie into his already tight schedule was a bad idea (at the time, he was wrapping production on Season 6 of Sons of Anarchy and getting ready to shoot Crimson Peak).

“I was going to finish 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,” he explained. “And I was going to shoot that film, wrap that on 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.”

Nearly a year later, it seems the 34-year-old regrets not being able to take the role. “Fifty’s going to be massage, it’s going to be huge,” he began. “I really didn’t want to fail on such a grand scale and I just couldn’t transition from [Sons character] Jax Teller to Christian Grey in 48 hours. I bit off more than I could chew and it was painful. I loved the character, I wanted to do it.”

He concluded by revealing that he was “sorry” to back out. “It was just a s–t situation,” he admitted.

50 Shades of Grey hits theaters on Valentine’s Day 2015.

MORE LINKS

WATCH: First 50 Shades of Grey Trailer is Here!

Dakota Johnson Forbidding Mom from Seeing 50 Shades of Grey

PIC: First Look at Dakota Johnson in 50 Shades of Grey

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