College student Anastasia Steele (Kristen Stewart) is required by Christian Grey (Ian Somerhalder) to sign a contract allowing him complete control over her life. As she gets to know him, she learns that his sexual tastes involve bondage, domination and sadism, and that childhood abuse left him a deeply damaged individual. In order to be his partner she agrees to experiment with BDSM, but struggles to reconcile who she is (a virgin who has never previously had a boyfriend) with who Christian wants her to be: his submissive, to-do-with-as-he-pleases partner in his “Red Room of Pain.”