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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