50 Shades of Grey Composite Yields The 'Perfect' Christian Grey

Fans of E.L. James' erotic bestseller 50 Shades of Grey have been fantasy-casting their perfect Christian Grey for months, arguing over whether this actor or that actor would best embody the BDSM-addicted rich playboy hero in the forthcoming film adaptation. But one enterprising academic has cobbled together the perfect Christian Grey with the help of police technology — a little Brad Pitt here, a dash of McDreamy there — morphing together the features of various leading men. The result: Kinda creepy!

University of Central Lancashire's (UCLan) Dr Faye Skelton employed image-generating software to "create" the first image of womankind's perfect Christian Grey, using a radio poll of a tiny sampling of fans of the novel. Among this Christian's features, taken from their suggested dream actors: Patrick Dempsey's eyes, Brad Pitt's jawline, Chris Hemsworth's nose, and, um, Val Kilmer's lips. Needless to say, this 12-woman focus group might have been a bit too narrow a selection...

"While we don't want to intrude on anyone's fantasies, based on a small sample of women, this is the image of Christian Grey they have in their heads when reading the novels," Skelton said (via the BBC). "Personally, I think he's quite handsome — although everyone's interpretation will be different."

Neat trick, but way off-base to begin with — almost all of the celebrity sex symbols whose features went into this bizarre face-mash are too old to play Christian Grey, anyway. It doesn't just make sense to fantasy-cast just any piece of hunky Hollywood man meat for the role; it makes even less sense to mush together the noses and ears and hairlines of random hot dudes and think that will equal hotness squared. I guess this faux Christian isn't terrible-looking - he looks like any bro you'd see at the gym, though I keep fixating on his various face parts and thinking about who they belong to. Is this the vision of godlike man-beauty you envision introducing Anastasia Steele to a world of kink and psycho-sexual dramarama? Not so much. Besides: What woman is that into Val Kilmer's lips?

[BBC, Daily Mail]