50 Facts About 'Fifty Shades of Grey' That Will Blow Your Mind
To begin: Jamie Dornan had to learn some whip skills.
To begin: Jamie Dornan had to learn some whip skills.
E L James' original pen name was "Snowqueen's Icedragon."
She posted the trilogy under the name on Fanfiction.net in August 2009.
She was "terrified" before the first film came out.
"I'm terrified. Completely. I've been terrified from the moment I published the book," she told Entertainment Weekly in 2013. "My mother was terrified of everything, and so am I. It's a terrible way to grow up. You don't expect this kind of success. Even now it floors me. My only ambition for the books was to see them in bookstores. This is huge. And there is this passionate fandom; we need to get this right for them."
Hardware stores reported abnormally high rope sales...
...around the time the Fifty Shades mania was at a fever pitch.
A women's charity in the U.K. was so disgusted by the book that they requested people donate their copies to be burned.
Only 24 books were submitted for the bonfire, so they decided to use the pages as toilet paper instead. Sustainable smut—nice!
Actresses auditioning for the part of Anastasia Steele had to read a monologue from the Ingmar Bergman film 'Persona' (1966)...
...to see if they could handle the film's subject matter.
Reading the book—or the whole series—is linked to a whole load of bad-for-you behaviors.
Including binge drinking, promiscuity, and a tendency to have an abusive partner, among others.
The Red Room of Pain took the most work to create...
...according to set designer C. Scott Baker. BDSM advisers were brought on board during filming to make sure the filmmakers "weren't doing things the [BDSM] community would flag as wrong."
The Red Room was also one of the most "vulnerable scenes" to film in the movie...
...according to Johnson.
The book actually started out as 'Twilight' fan fiction...
"I was inspired by Twilight author Stephenie Meyer...she just kind of flipped this switch in my head," James said.
...But Stephenie Meyer is apparently not the biggest fan.
"It's not my thing," she reportedly admitted.
J.K. Rowling also said she has no intention of ever reading 'Fifty Shades of Grey.'
Her editor also made her promise she'd never touch it, perhaps fearful of contracting inner-goddess-itis.
Johnson wasn't even sure if she wanted the role of Anastasia at first.
"I wasn't very invested at first, just because I was a little scared of it. The material was intense, and I've never done anything like that before," she said. "But that just told me it was something I should do."
'Fifty Shades of Grey' has sold more than 100 million copies worldwide.
That's more than both Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and the Twilight series.
Jamie Dornan wore a "penis pouch" while shooting.
"As a guy you put all your essentials in a little bag and you tie it up like a little bag of grapes and it's tucked away," he said.
Director Sam Taylor-Johnson used her art-world connections to furnish Christian Grey's penthouse...
...with works by Jake Chapman (a former boyfriend of Taylor-Johnson's), John Baldessari, Edward Ruscha, Gary Hume, Georgie Hopton, Harland Miller, and Rob Pruitt.
Jamie Dornan had to learn to walk differently to play Christian Grey.
The actor tends to walk on his toes rather than his heels.
There were a few injuries during the nine-and-a-half-weeks shoot.
"I think there was a bit of rope burn," director Sam Taylor-Johnson said. "I'd have to remind Jamie to hold back with the prop."
A first edition of 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles,' like the one Christian gives Ana, would cost a lot of money.
And by a lot we mean a cool $14,000.
Before the film's release, Johnson had to brace herself for the fame.
"I think about my dwindling anonymity and that's really scary because a very large part of me would be perfectly happy living on a ranch in Colorado and having babies and chickens and horses—which I will do anyway," she said. But she knew she couldn't pass up the opportunity to become Anastasia Steele. "I wanted to be involved because it's so different...and it's an intense love story."
The book and films inspired some pretty random stuff...
...including baby clothes, a teddy bear, a 15-types-of-bacon burger, a board game, a cookbook, two E L James-endorsed wines, and a Family Guy supercut (see above).
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