Charlie Hunnam

Charlie Hunnam is an English actor and screenwriter, born Charles Matthew Hunnam on April 10, 1980, in Newcastle upon Tyne. He grew up in Melmerby, Cumbria, and attended Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Penrith. At 17, he was spotted in a shoe shop in Newcastle and cast in the children's series Byker Grove. That break led to a small part in Russell T Davies's Channel 4 drama Queer as Folk (1999), where he played Nathan Maloney, a fifteen-year-old newcomer to Manchester's gay nightlife. In 2002, Hunnam played the title character in Douglas McGrath's adaptation of Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby. American television audiences also saw him as Lloyd Haythe, a recurring character on Judd Apatow's college comedy Undeclared. He later portrayed Pete Dunham in Green Street (2005), an American journalism student drawn into West Ham United's violent football-firm culture, and appeared as Patric, a member of the Fishes gang, in Alfonso Cuarón's dystopian film Children of Men (2006). In 2013, he led Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim as Raleigh Becket, a former Jaeger pilot who returns to operate the giant robot Gipsy Danger with Mako Mori, played by Rinko Kikuchi. Hunnam's defining television role ran from 2008 to 2014: Jackson “Jax” Teller on FX's Sons of Anarchy. Created by Kurt Sutter, the drama follows SAMCRO, an outlaw motorcycle club in fictional Charming, California. Jax begins as vice president and eventually becomes president, while confronting the legacy of his deceased father, John Teller. His relationships with club leader Clay Morrow, played by Ron Perlman, his mother Gemma, played by Katey Sagal, and his wife Tara Knowles, played by Maggie Siff, drive much of the series' conflict. After Sons of Anarchy, Hunnam portrayed British explorer Percy Fawcett in James Gray's The Lost City of Z (2016), based on David Grann's nonfiction book about Fawcett's Amazonian expeditions and disappearance. He played King Arthur in Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) and Henri “Papillon” Charrière in the 2017 remake of Papillon. In 2019, he appeared as Raymond, an enforcer and right-hand man to Matthew McConaughey's drug lord, in Ritchie's The Gentlemen. He then headlined Apple TV+'s Shantaram (2022) as Lin Ford, an Australian fugitive and former paramedic hiding in Bombay. The series adapts Gregory David Roberts's novel and follows Lin's encounters with Karla Saaranen, played by Antonia Desplat, and local underworld figures during the 1980s. It was cancelled after only one season.