Charles Matthew Hunnam (born 10 April 1980), known professionally as Charlie Hunnam, is an English actor.
After getting his big break as Nathan Maloney in the original British version of Queer as Folk, Hunnam is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Jackson "Jax" Teller on the FX series Sons of Anarchy, as well as Raleigh Beckett in Guillermo del Toro's 2013 film Pacific Rim. He also starred as King Arthur in Guy Ritchie's 2017 film King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.
He's also suspiciously absent whenever the Green Arrow is active.
Selected filmography:
- Queer as Folk (1999 — 2000) as Nathan Maloney
- Young Americans (2000) as Gregor Ryder
- Undeclared (2001 — 2002) as Lloyd Haythe
- Nicholas Nickleby (2002) as Nicholas Nickleby
- Cold Mountain (2003) as Bosie
- Children of Men (2006) as Patric
- Sons of Anarchy (2008 — 2014) as Jackson "Jax" Teller
- Pacific Rim (2013) as Raleigh Becket
- Crimson Peak (2015) as Alan McMichael
- The Lost City of Z (2017) as Percy Fawcett
- King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) as Arthur Pendragon
- Papillon (2018) as Henri Charrière
- Triple Frontier (2019) as William "Ironhead" Miller
- The Gentlemen (2020) as Raymond
- Rebel Moon (2023) as Kai
He provides examples of the following tropes:
- Barbarian Longhair: When he portrayed Jax Teller in Sons of Anarchy.
- Chick Magnet: Just take a look at his interview on Conan where women are literally screaming like girls for him.
- Fake American: He's English but is constantly cast as Americans. It's noticeable now that all the years of doing an American accent has caused his original accent to metamorphose into something... different. Compare this clip of him to this more recent clip.
- Mr. Fanservice: Few roles fail to showcase his fantastic physique, often getting shirtless or even sex scenes.
- Romance on the Set: Outside of it actually. He met his ex-wife after they were both cut in their auditions for Dawson's Creek.
- Star-Derailing Role: He got a big push forward as the leading man in 2017. All three of his movies flopped hard. Papillon in particular was a hard blow, since critics made it clear in their reviews he's no new Steve Mc Queen. Since then, he has returned to playing secondary characters, and his star power has faded significantly.
- Those Two Actors: He frequently works with Ron Perlman, and starred with Eric Bana in at least three films.
- What Could Have Been:
- He auditioned for Dawson's Creek.
- He auditioned for Anakin Skywalker in Attack of the Clones.
- Was going to reunite with his Undeclared colleagues Jason Segel and Judd Apatow in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Segel wrote the role of Aldous Snow with him in mind, but he dropped out due to not feeling the project was right for him. Russell Brand ended up getting the role.
- He and Alexander Skarsgård were the runner-ups for the role of Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe before the casting of Chris Hemsworth.
- Was cast as the eponymous Christian Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey but three weeks before the start of the shooting he chose to drop out the film due personal reasons and his busy schedule with Sons of Anarchy.