Charlie Hunnam Answers The Web's Most Searched Questions

WIRED

Charlie Hunnam visits WIRED to answer his most searched for questions on Google. Does Charlie Hunnam have tattoos? Does he love motorcylces given his time starring on "Sons of Anarchy?" Does Charlie Hunnam know martial arts? Why is Charlie Hunnam playing Ed Gein on Netflix's Monster: The Ed Gein Story? Answers to these questions and many more await on the WIRED Autocomplete Interview of Charlie Hunnam.  Director: Justin Wolfson  Director of Photography: Kevin Dynia Editor: Richard Trammell Talent: Charlie Hunnam Line Producer: Jamie Rasmussen Associate Producer: Brandon White  Production Manager: Peter Brunette Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark Talent Booker: Mica Medoff Camera Operator: Chris Eustache Sound Mixer: Sean Paulsen Production Assistant: Shanti Cuizon-Burden Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin Post Production Coordinator: Stella Shortino Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo Additional Editor: Sara Rao Assistant Editor: Billy Ward

Transcript

00:00Hi, I'm Charlie Hunnam, and this is the Wired Autocomplete interview.

00:08Let's see what Google wants to know.

00:15Does Charlie Hunnam actually ride motorcycles?

00:17I did ride motorcycles because, like, you know, I'm an actor,

00:21and we just, like, try to do the stuff that the characters that we play do.

00:25So I was riding a motorcycle thinking I was, like, a little biker for many years

00:30while I was doing Sons of Anarchy.

00:31I put, I don't know, maybe, like, 65,000 miles on my bike.

00:34I rode it a lot for 10 years, and then I kind of got the fear, and I live in L.A.,

00:38and for those of you who don't live in L.A., everyone who lives in L.A.

00:42kind of sucks at driving, and so I kind of got in my head about it

00:47and felt as though it was just, like, a little whisper in the back of my head

00:50that said maybe I should chill a little bit on the motorcycle riding.

00:54So I chilled a little bit, but I have been riding a little bit recently.

00:58But, you know, there's, like, a lot of Teslas and Priuses on the road

01:02that will definitely kill you stone dead if you're not careful.

01:04So does Charlie Hunnam have tattoos?

01:06I have one tattoo that I got when I was 18, which was, like, a mistake.

01:12So, yeah, it's, like, some tribal thing that I dreamt,

01:16and I thought it was, like, profound so that I should get it tattooed.

01:19And then you realize, like, not all dreams are profound.

01:21Some of them are just, like, shit tattoos.

01:23Does Charlie Hunnam know martial arts?

01:26Yeah, I study Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, so, yes, I know a little bit of Jiu-Jitsu.

01:31I mess my back up, so I've not been training, practicing Jiu-Jitsu as much as I'd like.

01:36But I got pretty ninja there for a minute or two, so don't try me out.

01:40Does Charlie Hunnam live on a ranch?

01:42I do not live on a ranch, but I do have a ranch that is undeveloped land

01:47without a house or anything on it.

01:49So I got a caravan, but I don't sleep in a caravan.

01:51I got a pickup truck and just sleep in the back of my pickup truck.

01:54It's cool.

01:55If I ever go missing, come look for me on the ranch,

01:58because there is a mountain lion that lives on the ranch that I've seen twice

02:01and seen its paw prints a lot.

02:03Hopefully it's well-fed and not interested in me,

02:06but I am delicious, so you never know.

02:10All right, here we go.

02:11When did Charlie Hunnam move to America?

02:15I moved to America, I think, in 1998.

02:21I had just done a TV show called Queer as Folk that got a lot of attention in the UK,

02:26and I managed to get an agent and didn't really like living in England

02:29and always wanted to live in America, so got invited to come out here.

02:33This agent said, would you like to come out for a trip and do some auditions?

02:37I'll represent you.

02:38And I said, yeah, I'll be there next week.

02:40It was either that or go back to college.

02:43I was at college, and I left to do this TV show,

02:46and I was supposed to go back to college, but I came to America instead.

02:49What has Charlie Hunnam written?

02:51I would say I'm one of the most successful writers who's never made anything.

02:57I've written several films and a couple of TV shows,

03:01none of which has been produced yet,

03:03which I'm trying not to get disheartened and believe that means that I suck as a writer,

03:08but the first film I wrote was about Vlad the Impaler,

03:12Vlad Tepes, who was the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula,

03:15so we'll see if at some point we can get that made.

03:18Why is Charlie playing Ed Gein?

03:22Well, that's a good question.

03:23I'm not quite sure of myself, or at least I wasn't.

03:26I thought I'd made a horrible mistake initially,

03:28but Ed Gein's a really interesting character in that he's somebody that I didn't know anything about.

03:33It seems a lot of people don't really know who he is directly,

03:36but had this enormous cultural impact in that he was the inspiration for

03:40Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Tobey Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre

03:44and Silence of the Lambs and all of these films,

03:47which really transformed the way we told stories about monsters.

03:51You know, prior to Psycho, Hitchcock's Psycho,

03:54monsters were werewolves and Dracula and vampires and stuff like that,

03:57and after Psycho, we became the monsters,

04:00and so he had this huge cultural impact.

04:03It wasn't even as much the Ed Gein of it that I was interested in.

04:07It was working with Ryan Murphy,

04:09who was wanting to ask the question, like, what makes a monster?

04:12We're interested in why Ed did what he did,

04:14and he did some pretty wild, despicable things,

04:17rather than what he did,

04:19because what he did was, although, like, pretty out there and extreme,

04:23and some people might be interested in that,

04:25it's, you know, pretty gross and despicable,

04:27but thankfully we spend most of our time trying to understand the man behind the monster.

04:31What does Charlie Hunnam like doing?

04:34Not Googling myself, I'll tell you that much.

04:36I like working a lot.

04:37I think I'm a workaholic.

04:39I like cooking.

04:40I like hiking.

04:41I like, uh, I don't know.

04:44All right, we're cooking.

04:46Do these get progressively weirder and more upsetting?

04:49Let's see.

04:50How does Charlie Hunnam change his accent?

04:53I guess, you know, I just, uh, well, I mean, I do it for work consciously.

04:57I think I'd probably do it when I travel around the world subconsciously.

05:01I get a lot of flack for having a half English, half American accent,

05:05which, you know, I'm half English and half American.

05:07I lived in England for 18 years, and I lived in America for 27 years,

05:11so what are you going to do?

05:12I'm half English, half American.

05:14But in terms of how I change my accent for work,

05:16I work with the dialect coach,

05:18and I run the lines lots and lots of times

05:21and try to figure out how to do it.

05:23How did Charlie Hunnam get the role of Jax?

05:26I, going back to my earlier question,

05:29had just finished writing a screenplay for the first time

05:31about Vlad the Impaler,

05:32which took longer than I thought it was going to do.

05:34I was broke, and so I had to go back to work as an actor,

05:38and it was the time before you got emailed scripts

05:40where you'd get printed hard copy, like, of scripts,

05:43and, like, 120 pages long,

05:45and I had this big pile of scripts to read,

05:47and the thinnest one was Sons of Anarchy

05:50because it was only about 50-some pages long.

05:53And so I said, all right, I'll read that one first,

05:55and just thought it was amazing.

05:57I loved the script and thought the character

05:59was, like, super cool,

06:01and the world just felt, like, fresh and original

06:04and, like, nothing I'd really seen before.

06:06And so I called my agent and said,

06:08I really like the script,

06:09and he's like, yeah, well,

06:10we sent that to you, like, three months ago,

06:11so, you know, it's probably too late.

06:13But the writer, Kurt Sutter,

06:15had really wanted you to read it,

06:17like, he'd sent it to you specifically.

06:18And I said, well, yeah,

06:19it would have been nice if you told me that.

06:21And he said, yeah, well,

06:21you weren't answering your phone, dickhead.

06:23So I went, okay.

06:24And so I said, well, just call him

06:26and find out if the role's still available.

06:29So we called him, and they hadn't cast it,

06:31and so I went and auditioned.

06:33It was interesting.

06:34He'd seen me in a film

06:35while he was writing this about hooligans,

06:38about British football hooligans,

06:39called Green Street Hooligans,

06:40and he thought,

06:41if that guy can do an American accent,

06:43then he's maybe my guy.

06:45What does Charlie Adam use in his hair?

06:47I add a little bit of Tancho,

06:51which I guess is maybe Japanese.

06:53It's like a lavender wax.

06:55Check it out.

06:55You can Google it.

06:56Can Charlie Hunnam dance?

06:57The answer is no.

06:59Okay, I'm not sweating yet,

07:01so this is good.

07:02Right, what is Charlie Hunnam's best movie?

07:04I don't know.

07:06I guess that's subjective.

07:08I would say my best movie is

07:10The Lost City of Zed,

07:12followed by maybe The Gentleman.

07:15I don't know,

07:15but I'll let you decide for that yourself.

07:18What are Charlie Hunnam's hobbies?

07:20Working, mainly.

07:21What did Charlie Hunnam keep from SOA?

07:24Everything that I could steal.

07:25I kept the bike.

07:26I kept the cut.

07:28I kept the knife.

07:29I kept the rings.

07:30I kept weird shit that made no sense,

07:32like a red plastic dragon

07:34that I didn't even like

07:35and didn't even really know

07:37was in the set till the last day,

07:38and it wasn't nailed down,

07:39so I stole that too.

07:41What music does Charlie Hunnam listen to?

07:44I listen to everything.

07:45So the fundamentals,

07:47the cornerstone of my musical journey

07:50would be Bob Dylan, Tom Waits,

07:52Leonard Cohen,

07:53ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba,

07:54Van Morrison.

07:55Van Morrison was huge.

07:56That's when I was young

07:58and learning to smoke pot

07:59and learning the meaning of life,

08:01and all of those artists

08:03helped me a lot in,

08:05I don't know,

08:05figuring out life.

08:06That's all the boards.

08:08That's all my bullshit.

08:09Thanks for having me.

08:10See you next time.

08:19Bye-bye.

08:19Thanks for joining us.

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