Charlie Hunnam Admits Nervous Breakdown Led to Backing Out of “Fifty Shades of Grey”

He’s one of the hunkiest guys in the business, but even Charlie Hunnam is susceptible to the pressures of Tinseltown.

In a new interview with Moviefone, the “Pacific Rim” star confessed that while he was excited about playing Christian Grey in “Fifty Shades of Grey,” in the end he had to walk away.

“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.”

He continued, “I started talking about this thing and I just got 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.”

However, Charlie’s other commitments began to weigh him down- “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. 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.”

“I just said, ‘I can’t… I can’t.’ To fail on such a grand scale — because Fifty’s going to be massive, it’s going to be huge. I really didn’t want to fail on such a grand scale and I just couldn’t transition from [‘Sons of Anarchy’ 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 and I wanted to do it.”