I'm not afraid to play the role of Christian Grey. Because I'm not like him. But I perfectly understand him. I never thought that he was a monster. He is simply woven from desires. As every one of us.

I don't like my physique. Who does? I was a skinny guy growing up, and I still feel like that same skinny kid.

You want roles that challenge you and that scare you a little and where you can really discover something, even about yourself, that maybe you didn't understand.

I can't really do the running on hard ground that I used to do. Instead I go swimming as often as possible.

I am never going to please all 100 million people who read the book. I'll be lucky if half that number are happy with me playing Christian Grey. I know there are campaigns of hate against me already.

Essentially I feel like all of that pressure when you're making the first of a franchise of [movies based on] books that mean so much to people that has so much attention on it, it can be quite paralyzing I think. I think a lot of that creeped in the first time around and it maybe affects the work.

It's a tiny industry. Actors all know each other to a point where you always know someone who knows the other person who worked with them.