Aaron Taylor-Johnson has explained why he doesn't think wife Sam Taylor-Johnson should have cast him in her adaptation of Fifty Shades Of Grey.

The artist and director took charge on the big screen version of PD James' erotic novel, which Charlie Hunnam was originally cast in as lead Christian Grey, before he dropped out and was replaced by The Fall's Jamie Dornan.

But Aaron told Nylon Guys magazine he wouldn't have wanted the part himself: "I think it would have been the wrong kind of hype to bring toward us. It would have been kind of funny that this character that all these women fancy - he's one in a million - and my wife picks her husband to play the part?

"I would love to have done something together again, but it wouldn't have been Fifty. We were both on the same page."

Unlike the book's characters, he assured the magazine, "We don't have a Red Room at home."

Asked whether he had read the books, Aaron replied: "No, I did not. I'll watch the movie, though!"

Aaron and Sam met when she directed him in Nowhere Boy in 2009, three years after he had quit school to move to Hollywood and become an actor.

He said of his ealy career: "It was a lot of crazy s*** I got up to for a couple years. I was pretty self-destructive at one point. I used to smoke 30 [cigarettes] a day, used to f***ing drink non-stop.

"I've always been able to be on the f***ing edge - be on the line, but then pull myself back."

He also admitted he used to pretend to be American at auditions: "It was kind of like learning how to pull. It was like, how do you go into a bar and point out the fittest girl and then just go, 'I'll have her by the end of the night?' I was at that age where that was kind of... I stopped when I met Sam."