JKING/FAMEFLYNET PICTURESIn Fifty Shades of Grey, Anastasia Steele is awe of Christian Grey's penis--which, as she describes it, is "soft and hard at once, like steel encased in velvet, and surprisingly tasty." (Oh my.)
But in the movie version of E.L. James' erotic novel, you won't get to feast your eyes on Mr. Grey's "considerable length." In other words? Sorry to disappoint Inner Goddesses everywhere, but Jamie Dornan will not be going full-frontal!
"You want to appeal to as wide an audience as possible without grossing them out," the 32-year-old actor told the U.K.'s Guardian. "You don't want to make something gratuitous, ugly and graphic."
And while there might "might be some suggestive elements" to the movie, Dornan said there "were contracts in place that viewers wouldn't be seeing, my, um..."
Todger (British slang for penis), suggested the Guardian? "Yeah," he laughed, "my todger."
Such a tease! There's no need to worry, though: Fifty Shades of Grey might not show Christian's nether regions in full detail, but it has plenty of near-nudity and (obviously) and BDSM action in the Red Room of Pain!
He insists, however, that shooting his steamy scenes with Dakota Johnson wasn't a turn-on. "Anyone who thinks actors get turned on doing sex scenes in films is mistaken," he told the Guardian. "There are dozens of hairy men standing around, moving cables and lighting equipment. That's not sexy unless you're into being watched, which I'm not."
That said, Dornan, unlike Johnson, is fine with his father watching the movie. "I'm more concerned about my mates," he said. "More concerned about the ribbing I'll get. We're all quite harsh with each other, in a lovely, known-each-other-all-our-lives way."
The Northern Irish star realizes, too, his Fifty Shades of Grey performance is "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," he said. "I know there are campaigns of hate against me already."
He acknowledged, too, there "is a huge intellectual snobbery about the book," but said, he understands why others might "have preconceived ideas about what it is."
His thoughts on that? "Look, the film is not the book," he said. "It's an adaptation, and Sam Taylor-Johnson is an artist as well as an award-winning film director. Look at her track record. And look at the film studios behind it. Universal. Focus. All I can say is, wait until you see it before passing judgment."
Fifty Shades of Grey is scheduled to hit theaters nationwide on Feb. 13, 2015.
(E!, NBC, Universal Pictures and Focus Features are all part of the NBCUniversal family.)