Actor Eddie Redmayne has revealed his confusion over why EL James was so against him playing Christian Grey in the Fifty Shades Of Grey film.

Eddie Redmayne
(Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

After the Les Miserables star said he would audition to play the kinky entrepreneur in the big-screen adaptation of the raunchy novels, the author disagreed and publicly shot down the idea.

“She took to her Twitter feed to go, ‘Under no circumstances!’,” the actor told Variety.

“It was like, all right, all right! Am I that bad? I can put a whip in my hand. I can get all kinky, can’t I? Apparently not.”

Jamie Dornan stars as Christian Grey
Jamie Dornan stars as Christian Grey, Rita Ora’s on-screen brother in the film (Universal)

Jamie Dornan landed the role, after Sons Of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam passed on the part – and Eddie, who next portrays physicist Stephen Hawking in The Theory Of Everything, doesn’t harbour any ill feelings towards him because they are good friends.

“We used to go to the Standard Hotel in West Hollywood, and split a sandwich between us because that means we could get cheaper parking. We’d swim and play table tennis for hours,” the 32-year-old actor said.