Charlie Hunnam

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Charlie Hunnam: 25 Things You Don't Know About Me (I Once Got Bumped by a Shark!)

Charlie Hunnam hates auditions, loves swimming and dreams of becoming a UFC fighter. The King Arthur: Legend of the Sword heartthrob, 37, sheds his armor for Us by sharing 25 things you don't know about him.
. I'm a sucker for a good sunset.

2. My biggest acting inspiration is Daniel Day Lewis. The man's a colossus.

3. Right now, I'm on a big Van Morrison kick, particularly Astral Weeks.

Hollywood's Shirtless Hunks!
4. I miss seeing the guys from Sons of Anarchy every day. They became my brothers. I also miss Jax a lot. He became my best pal.

5. The action in King Arthur was the toughest part of the shoot. I had weeks where I was sword fighting for 12 hours a day, five days a week. My body was destroyed.

6. I'm too old for fairy tales.

7. When I was surfing in Costa Rica, I got bumped by a shark.

8. Auditions are horrible. The worst was probably for Lions for Lambs with Robert Redford. He was two hours late to the meeting and ate sushi while I was auditioning.

9. Sundays at home with my girlfriend, Morgana McNelis, are when I am most happy.

10. The biggest compliment to my looks is that my girlfriend still sleeps with me.

11. My biggest unfulfilled dream is to one day become a UFC fighter.

12. I wish I could meet Santa Claus. I'd thank him for all the presents.

13. I don't have any fillings in my teeth. Thanks, Mum!

14. I idolize my mum. She's a total badass.

15. I took a Thai cooking course in Thailand. I've been having a lovely time cooking my food up Thai style.

16. Jeans and a flannel shirt are my absolute favorite things to wear.

17. My weaknesses are a big bowl of spaghetti puttanesca and a big bowl of chocolate ice cream.

18. Swimming is my favorite workout. I like to be in water.

19. My worst attribute is my singing.

20. My biggest pet peeve is people's horrible personal hygiene. I'm amazed by how many dudes I see in restrooms that use the toilet and don't wash their hands. Then they complain when they get sick.

21. It's impossible to say what my all-time favorite film is, but this week it's War Witch, written and directed by Kim Nguyen.

22. Same goes for my favorite book. I'm reading Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. I'm gonna be bummed when I finish.

23. I wish I could kick my ambition. Hunger for success brings with it an equivalent amount of suffering.

24. I love long walks in the countryside of Northern England. That and California are equally my favorite places.

25. I'd most like to live on a farm. I believe there's no greater satisfaction that growing your own food.
 
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#2,267
It’s Time to Start Taking Charlie Hunnam Seriously
The ‘King Arthur’ actor is more than a pretty face — even though his face is really, really pretty

It’s easy to remember what Charlie Hunnam looks like: All you have to do is close your eyes and imagine all of the best things, because his face is all the Best Things. One of my Best Things is the way that flour tortillas feel under your fingertips after they’ve just been made. Charlie Hunnam’s face looks like that. Another one of my Best Things is the way it feels when I say something silly and my youngest son, who is 4, laughs sincerely. Charlie Hunnam’s face looks like that. Another one of my Best Things is when an older person calls me a thing that reminds me of being a kid and so all of a sudden, even for just those couple of seconds, I get to feel that weightlessness of being a kid again. Charlie Hunnam’s face looks like that.

Sometimes — and this is not a joke — I will Google “Charlie Hunnam” and then click “Images” and then, bang! What an afternoon. Have you ever done that? I’ve done that. I do that. I really like this one. This one is good, too. There are so many.

A couple of days ago I watched The Lost City of Z, which stars Charlie Hunnam as Percy Fawcett, a British explorer from the early 20th century who disappeared in the Amazonian rain forest while trying to find evidence of a lost civilization. I read the book the movie is based on several years ago. It’s a wonderful book, and, at the risk of sounding pretentious, I would say it’s better than the movie. It’s more moving and more intriguing and does a much better job of relaying the dangers of the jungle. That said, at the risk of sounding reverse-pretentious, I would also say that the movie is actually better than the book, because it stars Charlie Hunnam, which the book does not. That’s how handsome and compelling Charlie Hunnam is: so handsome and compelling that it would make me lie about things that don’t need to be lied about.

Oftentimes I wonder if being as attractive as Charlie Hunnam is some kind of detriment. Would he be taken more seriously if he were 10 percent less handsome? Would his acting be given more credence? Would his abilities beyond posing for pictures be advertised more, and written about more, and celebrated more? I wonder if he’s ever sat there and been like, “I’ll bet people would lie to me less if I were uglier.” That idea makes me sad because that’s a truly bizarre way to live, but it also makes me happy, because if that’s a question that you ever have to ask yourself, then I’ll bet life probably isn’t all that hard for you. I’m happy that Charlie Hunnam lives a life where that’s in play.

While The Lost City of Z has scored well for its complexity and examination of character, King Arthur, the other new movie starring Hunnam, has already gotten several bad reviews (and also is projected to flop). The thing of it is, though, is that there are reportedly five follow-ups to Arthur in motion. It’s an interesting state of affairs, and a good encapsulation of what appears to be the beginning of a Charlie Hunnam conundrum (a Hunnamdrum?): He was captivating in Z as he wandered around the jungle (and also inside his own head), but most of the attention has gone to King Arthur, the movie where his machismo and preternatural cool are best on display.

So what happens from here? What road will he walk down? Will he be able to balance the two paths like Brad Pitt did after Legends of the Fall? Or will he walk in one direction, simply hoping to avoid the other?

Charlie Hunnam has a walk. It’s very distinctly a Charlie Hunnam walk. Originally, I thought he’d invented the walk for Jax Teller, his swaggering character on Sons of Anarchy, a television show about an outside-the-law motorcycle gang. The walk — loping, blustering, chest-and-crotch-heavy — was perfect for Jax, the smartest and angriest and most enlightened and most conflicted member of the Sons. It matched everything about him as he tried to sort through all the pieces of being the leader of an outlaw gang and also a husband and father who didn’t want those pure parts of his life affected by the dirty parts. He didn’t do it all the time; he didn’t do it when he was, say, walking into his home at the end of a day. It was very much a situational thing. It was a weapon, almost, and definitely a tell. By the third season, anytime you’d see him do it, you’d instantly know that something treacherous was about to happen, be it a threat or a smashing

There was a period for a couple of days after I’d binge-watched Sons for the second time when I tried to walk like that, too. I’d straighten out my spine some and let my shoulders swing a bit more than normal. I’d harden my face and loosen my legs. The second day of me doing it, my wife and I were out running errands. I started doing it as we walked through a Target, and she was like, “What, uh … what are you doing?” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “Why are you trying to walk like Jax Teller?” I said, “I LOOKED LIKE JAX TELLER WHEN I DID IT?!” She said, “That’s not what I said.”
 
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Sons of Anarchy was the first thing I’d noticed Charlie Hunnam in. He’d been on other shows and in other things that I’d seen (he was fantastic in Green Street Hooligans, for example, in which he played a proto-Jax, and he’s also excellent in Queer As Folk, which I’ve only recently begun watching) (you can see him do the walk in Queer As Folk here). But only after watching a few seasons of Sons did I realize it was the same person. That’s most likely because Hunnam played that character for so long (the show ran for six years), but it’s also possible that it’s because Hunnam was so exactly perfect for that role. It highlighted all of the things he’s the best at. It allowed him to:

  • Be menacing, and let me tell you something: There is nobody better at looking angry right now.
  • Smolder, and let me tell you another something: The only person who can smolder better than Charlie Hunnam is Tom Hardy, and that’s because Tom Hardy is the best smolderer on the planet. (I nearly passed out when I saw this magazine cover in a grocery store two summers ago.)

Look tormented, and I’m thinking of that one scene where, after his infant son had been kidnapped and then eventually given away to a loving family, he showed up to take him back, saw the potential for his son to have a life outside of the mayhem of his motorcycle club, then just stood there in tears as he realized that, despite (or perhaps due to) his willingness to kill to protect those around him, the baby was better off without him.
  • Appear morally conflicted, and I’m of course talking about the way that he was caught between being truly exceptional as the leader of the Sons and being absolutely terrible at figuring out a way out of that lifestyle for his family.

Be smarter than everyone else but still not quite smart enough, and here I’m remembering all of the times he plotted to make things better for the Sons and, generally speaking, only ever got them into more danger and more trouble.

When I saw the previews for The Lost City of Z for the first time, I said, “JAX TELLER AS PERCY FAWCETT?!” When I saw the previews for King Arthur for the first time, I said, “JAX TELLER AS KING ARTHUR?!” I wonder how long that’s going to happen. Probably forever.

Sons of Anarchy was a good show. It was a bit trashy, yes, and that was always the biggest criticism of it. But there’s a difference between being accidentally trashy, which Sons was not, and being purposefully trashy, which Sons was. I have to assume it was a creative decision. Because beyond that part of it, Sons was also smart and nuanced and exciting and silly and clever and patient and emotional. (I don’t think it’s an accident that all of those same words could be used to describe Charlie Hunnam as an actor.)

Near the end of the first season, the wife of one of the key Sons was accidentally murdered as a byproduct of some of the moves that a crooked ATF agent made. It was crushing to watch (she was shot in the back of the head after a party). But the main reason it was so memorable was because the writers spent the next two seasons working in the background to pull together all of the pieces that would eventually lead to the Sons executing of the ATF agent. It was masterful, the way it was done. They never tipped
their hand once; they never hurried; they never panicked. It was just a thing where, all at once, AS IT WAS HAPPENING, you realized, “Oh, ****. They’ve been planning this for two years.”

People will focus on the time that a guy bit his own tongue off to avoid talking to the police, or the time that a man hid a dismembered head in a pot of chili, or the time one person carved another person’s eyeball out of his head with a grapefruit spoon, and as well they should. But there was really good writing on that show, too. It was always about more than what people were looking at. It’s the same way with Hunnam, I suppose. Whether he’s Jax Teller or Percy Fawcett or even King Arthur, he’s always something else first.
 
#2,269
Charlie Hunnam: Pushy When It Counts (Picky, Too)

Neither director wanted him, but then they took a look at him, and then he opened his mouth.

He was hungry, and pushy, and the director Guy Ritchie liked that. He was gorgeous, and charmed women and children, and the director James Gray liked that, too.

Charlie Hunnam is not exactly a household name in the United States, at least not just yet.

He is known in some quarters as the guy who backed out of “Fifty Shades of Grey.” He is known in others as the conflicted capo of a California motorcycle gang in the FX series “Sons of Anarchy.” Four years ago, he starred in Guillermo del Toro’s “Pacific Rim,” and a decade before that played a menacing albino Confederate in Anthony Minghella’s “Cold Mountain.” Across the pond, in his native England, he rose to fame as a teen, playing a coltish gay youngster in the breakout series “Queer as Folk.”

But all those parts did not make a breakout star of Mr. Hunnam, 37, not least because he has been enormously picky about roles. He once spent a few lean years living off an organic marijuana crop he cultivated in his Los Angeles home, he said, rather than taking jobs that left him cold.

“I can’t even believe I’m being this candid,” Mr. Hunnam said as he revealed his pot-growing days — they’re behind him now, he swears — over a lunch of seared halibut and spring peas at the Four Seasons in Lower Manhattan a few weeks ago.
Tall and V-shaped, blond and chiseled, Mr. Hunnam has been likened to Brad Pitt and Channing Tatum. Yet he didn’t carry the “here we go again” ennui or whiff of wariness that often permeates the air around celebrities. This despite the fact that he was in the thick of the press tour for “King Arthur,” the $102 million film Mr. Ritchie directed and helped write, in theaters Friday, May 12, with Mr. Hunnam as its star.
Scant weeks before, he had been out promoting Mr. Gray’s “The Lost City of Z,” which he starred in, too. By every appearance, the lean years are no more. Yet both films nearly eluded him.

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Mr. Ritchie flatly refused to consider Mr. Hunnam for Arthur at first, not least because he envisioned a king with an action-figure physique. “There’s more fat in a chip than there is on Charlie,” Mr. Ritchie said in an interview. “I just didn’t think he was robust enough.”

Infuriated, Mr. Hunnam flew to London from Los Angeles to force a meeting that Mr. Ritchie couldn’t say no to because Mr. Hunnam’s manager is his close friend. Looking back, Mr. Hunnam said he was not sure how much he wanted the role; he just wanted to be seen. Yet within five minutes, Mr. Ritchie said, “I knew I loved him.”
The director continued, “When someone’s hungry and pushy and they can back it up with something, then it’s a wonderful conspiracy.” Mr. Hunnam was smart, meticulous and dived deep. He also hit the gym like a madman and, soon enough, looked like He-Man.

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This in turn dismayed Mr. Gray, when, eight days after wrapping “King Arthur,” Mr. Hunnam showed up for a costume fitting for “Z.” The film is about Percy Fawcett, a real-life British explorer who disappeared in the Amazon in 1925 while searching for signs of an ancient civilization.

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Mr. Hunnam recalled that the “Z” director “looked in abject horror at my body and said, ‘This is a disaster, this is nowhere close to the physicality that we need for Fawcett.’” Mr. Hunnam added: “I just looked like a superhero, you know? Stupid.”

All of which he managed to blame on Mr. Pitt. When he took his shirt off in “Fight Club” and “Snatch,” Mr. Hunnam said, he created “a new expectation of what a man should be.”

That said, Mr. Pitt was the one who got Mr. Hunnam the part of Fawcett. Mr. Pitt’s production company, Plan B, had tapped Mr. Gray, whose previous films include “The Yards” and “We Own the Night,” to write and direct the picture.

Mr. Pitt was to star but dropped out because of scheduling conflicts; then the lead was to be Benedict Cumberbatch, but his wife was about to give birth. Plan B suggested Mr. Hunnam, at which point Mr. Gray balked.

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“I thought he was a Hells Angels kind of guy, which makes me feel like an absolute fool beyond comprehension,” Mr. Gray said, in a phone chat.

After learning Mr. Hunnam was British, Mr. Gray invited him over for dinner, making spaghetti and meatballs, which Mr. Hunnam dutifully ate even though, as Mr. Gray later learned, he avoids carbs.

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“He was so warm and funny. My wife thought he was handsomest man in the world, and my son was obsessed with him,” Mr. Gray said. “‘Lost City of Z’ is all about feelings of inadequacy about class. He understood all that stuff, and spoke to it directly.”
 
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For Mr. Gray, that was key. Like his character in the film, Mr. Hunnam burned with the need to prove himself.

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Mr. Hunnam grew up in a struggling former coal-mining hub, Newcastle upon Tyne, in Northeast England, which makes him a Geordie, the nickname for people from that region and their dialect — “dead” sounds like “deed,” “crown” like “croon.” His parents split when he was 2, and though Charlie and his older brother lived with their mother, his father loomed large. Respected and feared, Billy Hunnam was a sharp-dressing scrap-metal dealer who, his son said, largely operated outside the law, and left young Charlie in awe. “He was a titan amongst men in that town,” Mr. Hunnam said.

Yet while his father had off-the-books wealth, he gave little money to Charlie, his brother or their mother, something Mr. Hunnam bears no animus about.
“In his immortal words,” Mr. Hunnam recalled, “he said to my mum, ‘Look, if I’m not going to be there to teach my sons to be men, then poverty will teach them to be men.’”

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Whatever ambition poverty might have fueled in Mr. Hunnam was boosted by his angelic looks. After being spotted in a shop, he was cast in a television series, and then later, when he was 18, as a 15-year-old seduced by Aidan Gillen, then 30, in the British series “Queer as Folk,” which ignited controversy for its racy gay sex scenes (and predated the American version).

“It was obvious to me he was going to wait for interesting roles to come along, and you can be waiting for a long time,” said Mr. Gillen, who plays Littlefinger in “Game of Thrones” and who also stars in “King Arthur.” “He hasn’t made it particularly easy for himself.”

At 18, he entered a short marriage to the actress Katharine Towne, and then moved to California, where he developed a much discussed hybridized accent. He was offered a few good roles and plenty of terrible ones, and turned to writing screenplays — selling one, about Vlad the Impaler, to Summit Entertainment and Plan B — and the aforementioned pot, which he sold to a medical dispensary.

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Then “Sons of Anarchy” came along. Kurt Sutter, who created the series, said he saw a movie star in Mr. Hunnam, one who grasped outlaw culture (his father Billy’s doing) and who was also hypercritical of himself (Mr. Hunnam later said he’s hypercritical of everything). “It’s the kind of insane unobtainable need for perfection,” Mr. Sutter said. “His methodical ascension wasn’t an overnight pretty-boy success. It was mounting a body of work for the right reasons.”

“Sons” ran from 2008 to 2014, and its final season broke rating records for FX. In 2013 he was cast as the kinky heartthrob in “Fifty Shades of Grey.” Having hit it off with the film’s director, Sam Taylor-Johnson, he envisioned Christian Grey as an Elon Musk-type laser-focused on amassing power. But he bowed out of the project: His father had died just months earlier — “life caught up with him” Mr. Hunnam said — and he was about to appear in Mr. del Toro’s film “Crimson Peak.”

While Mr. Hunnam publicly claimed exhaustion, he said in the interview he also realized the studio did not share his vision. “I thought, ‘I’m just not going to have the time or the energy to fight the fight to get this thing what I want it to be,’” he said. He would later hear about the highly publicized strife that emerged on set. “I’m glad that I wasn’t stuck in the middle of a conflict like that,” he said. “There’s no regrets.”

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Mr. Hunnam has since added yet another feather to his cap; he starred, with Rami Malek, in the remake of “Papillon,” which wrapped production this past December.

But he can’t, or won’t, breathe easy yet.

First, with the “King Arthur” tour’s end in sight, he feels himself staring into an abyss. He’s long grappled with existentialism and, left to his own devices, can get overwhelmed, depressed. And he also struggles with reintegrating into off-set life, which includes his long-term relationship with the jewelry designer Morgana McNelis.

“On set is the only time life fully makes sense, that I feel connected to the rhythm of my life and what it all means,” he said. Once that’s over, he added: “That thing that was filling me up is gone. And so in its wake is a giant hole that screams out every day ‘please fill me.’”

He also knows his time at the summit might be fleeting.

“The fear of ‘Is it going to happen?’ just immediately gets replaced with ‘Is it going to be temporary?’” he said.

By all indications, his boomlet has not gone to his head. One recent night in New York, Mr. Ritchie invited Mr. Hunnam to join a bunch of friends for a nice dinner. Mr. Hunnam replied thanks, but he was already eating dinner, by himself, in a sushi joint a few blocks away.
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#2,271
Could Charlie Hunnam Get Any Sexier? Yes — He Cooks for His Girlfriend!

Charlie Hunnam: actor, heartthrob… master chef?

When Hunnam, 37, is not on location filming or training for his next role, the King Arthur actor says he loves to relax in the kitchen.

“If I’ve got a full day off I try to get out into nature a little bit and then cook a bunch of food,” he tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “I love to cook for people.”

And luckily for Hunnam, he has the perfect taste tester: his longtime girlfriend Morgana McNelis, for whom he recently cooked an elaborate meal to celebrate her birthday.

“I literally spent all day cooking,” he says. “She had about 15 of her friends over, and I cooked an enormous meal for everyone, and we drank some really good wine and hung out. It was a lovely day.”

The actor says he loves how cooking can bring people together.

“It was so satisfying and immediate gratification,” he adds. “A lovely thing to share. Good food, good pals.”

So how does he maintain his fit physique with the cooking and consuming of these indulgent meals? Hunnam says he works out every day — even when he’s not working.

“I have to,” he says of his strict workout routine. “The emotional and mental benefits of working out are really extreme for me so I’ve become completely dependent. I can get a little depressed when I’m not working out.”

“I just feel better [when I workout]. I feel more positive,” he adds. “I feel happier and more stable.”

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword hits theaters May 12.untitled.png
 
#2,275
Charlie was on Talking with Chris Hardwick last Sunday. It was nice to see him sitting down talking casually on a variety of subjects..not just the same press junket crap.
 
#2,276
nhh
NicolesCloset said:
If anyone sees the movie please share your thoughts. I'm a big fan
Click to expand...

I saw it on Sunday. It's getting bad reviews but I liked it. The story is a bit predictable and Guy Ritchie's directing style might not be everyone's cup of tea. On the other hand, the action sequences are fabulous, Charlie is great in the role, and there's a strong female character who isn't there only to be a love interest.
 
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#2,278
NicolesCloset said:
If anyone sees the movie please share your thoughts. I'm a big fan
Click to expand...
Started watching it on showbox (I had no desire to watch it in theaters based on the trailer) and it lost me probably midway into the movie, turned it off. I generally like Guy Ritchie films so I don't think that was the issue. The movie just seemed not developed....dunno. Charlie Hunnam just keeps playing all his roles as Jax, to me, so that didn't help as well. Based on what I watched of the movie, it wasn't bad but it wasn't good IMO.
 
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