Charlie Hunnam has enjoyed quite the career, from starting out on British TV to his latest role as notorious serial killer Ed Gein. The latter is the latest installment of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan's Netflix Monster anthology, which previously explored Jeffrey Dahmer, and Lyle and Erik Menendez.
Infamous killer Gein, dubbed the "godfather of all serial killers" by the streamer, notably murdered a number of women and desecrated their bodies, before his crimes were exposed in the late 1950s when it was discovered that he had exhumed several corpses.
The role is a new turn for Hunnam, who had played a variety of parts since starting his career in the late 1990s in Byker Grove.
The star admitted in a new interview with Variety that his family didn't expect him to go into the arts initially, with his father hoping he would take over his scrap metal business in Newcastle.
"My dad was an incredibly tough scrap-metal merchant in a brutal industry," he recalled. "He was sort of a king in our city. He wanted me to take over his business, and I just knew that I wouldn’t be able to survive in that world."
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Following Byker Grove, Hunnam landed his breakout role in Russell T Davies's groundbreaking Queer as Folk as teenager Nathan Maloney. While it only aired for two seasons between 1999 and 2000, the show made a huge impact, and was praised for its positive portrayal of gay life at that time.
However, the actor struggled to crack the US, with roles in Young Americans – the Dawson's Creek spin-off – and Judd Apatow's Undeclared proving unsuccessful given both were cancelled after one season.
Hunnam did have more success in movies though, playing the titular role in a 2002 adaptation of Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby with Jamie Bell, Jim Broadbent and Alan Cumming, as well as Bosie in 2003's Cold Mountain with Nicole Kidman and Jude Law. He also co-led 2005 football hooligan movie Green Street with Elijah Wood and starred in dystopian classic Children of Men the following year with Clive Owen and Julianne Moore.
In 2008, his big US break came in Sons of Anarchy as Jax Teller, a member of the eponymous outlaw motorcycle club, with the show going on to run for seven seasons until 2014.
From there, he landed a role in Guillermo del Toro's 2013 movie Pacific Rim – something that he admits he took because he "thought it was a great opportunity to work with a director" he really liked.
"I couldn't care less about giant robots fighting giant monsters," he added. "I read the script, and I had no emotional experience with it at all."
He collaborated again with the famed director two years later on Crimson Peak, and later appeared on 2016's The Lost City of Z, 2017's notorious King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, and 2017 remake Papillon with Rami Malek.
Hunnam was due to originally play Christian Grey in the Fifty Shades of Grey movie series, though eventually backed out only to be replaced by Jamie Dornan, the star telling Variety that he "just wasn’t thinking clearly" at the time and has "no regrets" about his exit.
More recent years have seen him appear in Apple TV+ series Shantaram and the first part of Zack Snyder's Netflix movie series Rebel Moon.
Now comes his latest endeavour, portraying the real-life figure who inspired killers in movies such as Psycho and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Hunnam accepted the role of serial killer Ed Gein in his first meeting with Murphy, recalling the creator telling him after a two-hour chat (via Variety): "Ryan turns around and says, 'If you want to play him…'."
Explaining his portrayal of the real-life figure, the actor further told Tudum: "I wanted to get as close as possible to who Ed was, to do him justice, and for this thing to feel authentic.
"This is going to be the really human, tender, unflinching, no-holds-barred exploration of who Ed was and what he did. But who he was being at the center of it, rather than what he did."
Monster: The Ed Gein Story is available on Netflix from 3 October.
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Sam is a freelance reporter and sub-editor who has a particular interest in movies, TV and music. After completing a journalism Masters at City University, London, Sam joined Digital Spy as a reporter, and has also freelanced for publications such as NME and Screen International. Sam, who also has a degree in Film, can wax lyrical about everything from Lord of the Rings to Love Is Blind, and is equally in his element crossing every 't' and dotting every 'i' as a sub-editor.
