Charlie Hunnam Answers The Web's Most Searched Questions

Hi, I am Charlie Hunnam.

and this is the Wired Autocomplete Interview.

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Let's see what Google wants to know.

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Does Charlie Hunnam actually ride motorcycles?

I did ride motorcycles because like you know,

I'm an actor and we just like try to do the stuff

that the characters that we play do.

So I was riding a motorcycle thinking

I was like a little biker for many years

while I was doing Sons of Anarchy.

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

I rode it a lot for 10 years

and then I kind of got the fear.

And I live in LA,

and for those of you don't live in LA,

everyone who lives in LA kind of sucks at driving.

And so I kind of got in my head about it

and felt as though it was just like a little whisper

in the back of my head that said

maybe I should chill a little bit on the motorcycle riding.

So, I chilled a little bit.

But I have been riding a little bit recently.

But you know, there's like a lot of Teslas

and Priuses on the road that will definitely kill you.

Stone dead if you're not careful, so.

Does Charlie Hunnam have tattoos?

I have one tattoo that I got when I was 18,

which was like a mistake. [laughs]

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

and I thought it was like profound

so that I should get it tattooed.

And then you realize like not all dreams are profound.

Some of them are just like shit tattoos.

Does Charlie Hunnam know martial arts?

Yeah, I studied Brazilian jiu-jitsu,

so yes, I know a little bit of jiu-jitsu.

I messed my back up

so I've not been training, practicing

jiu-jitsu as much as I'd like,

but I got pretty ninja there for a minute or two,

so don't try me out.

Does Charlie Hunnam live on a ranch?

I do not live on a ranch,

but I do have a ranch

that is undeveloped land without a house or anything on it.

So I got a caravan but I don't sleep in the caravan.

I got a pickup truck and just sleep

in the back of my pickup truck.

It's cool, if I ever go missing,

come look for me on the ranch

'cause there is a mountain lion

that lives on the ranch that I've seen twice

and seen its paw prints a lot.

Hopefully, it's well fed and not interested in me,

but I am delicious so you never know.

Alright, here we go.

When did Charlie Hunnam move to America?

I moved to America I think in 1998.

I'd just done a TV show called Queer as Folk

that got a lot of attention in the UK

and I managed to get an agent

and didn't really like living in England

and always wanted to live in America.

So got invited to come out here.

This agent said, Would you like to come out for a trip

and you know, do some auditions, I'll represent you.

And I said, Yeah, I'll be there next week.

It was either that or go back to college.

I was at college and I left to do this TV show

and I was supposed to go back to college

but I came to America instead, so.

What has Charlie Hunnam written?

I would say I'm the most-

One of the most successful writers

who's never made anything.

I've written several films

and a couple of TV shows,

none of which has been produced yet,

which I'm trying not to get disheartened

and believe that means that I suck as a writer.

But first film I wrote was

about Vlad the Impaler, Vlad Tepes,

who is the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula.

So we'll see if some point we can get that made.

Why is Charlie playing Ed Gein?`

Well that's a good question.

I'm not quite sure myself, or at least I wasn't.

I thought I'd made a horrible mistake initially,

but Ed Gein's a really interesting character

in that he's somebody that I didn't know anything about.

It seems a lot of people don't really know

who he is directly,

but had this enormous cultural impact,

in that he was the inspiration

for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho

and Toby Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre

and Silence of the Lambs

and all of these films,

which really transformed the way we

told stories about monsters.

You know, prior to Psycho, Hitchcock's Psycho,

monsters were werewolves and Dracula

and vampires and stuff like that.

And after Psycho we became the monsters.

And so he had this huge cultural impact.

It wasn't even as much the Ed Gein of it

that I was interested in.

It was working with Ryan Murphy who was wanting

to ask the question like What makes a monster?

We were interested in why Ed did what he did,

and he did some pretty wild, despicable things,

rather than what he did.

'Cause what he did was-

Although like pretty out there

and extreme and some people might be interested in that,

it's you know, pretty gross and despicable.

But thankfully we spend most of our time trying

to understand the man behind the monster.

What does Charlie Hunnam like doing?

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

I like working a lot. I think I'm a workaholic.

I like cooking, I like hiking, I like, I dunno.

Alright, we're cooking.

Do these get progressively weirder and more upsetting?

Let's see.

How does Charlie Hunnam change his accent?

I guess, you know, I just-

Well I mean I do it for work consciously.

I think I'd probably do it when I travel

around the world subconsciously.

I get a lot of flack

for having a half English, half American accent, which,

you know, I'm half English and half American.

I lived in England for 18 years

and I lived in America for 27 years.

So what are you gonna do?

I'm half English, half American,

but in terms of how I changed my accent for work,

I work with a dialect coach

and I run the lines lots and lots of times

and try to figure out how to do it.

How did Charlie Hunnam get the role of Jax?

I- going back to my earlier question,

had just finished writing a screenplay

for the first time about Vlad the Impaler,

which took longer than I thought it was gonna do.

I was broke and so I had to go back to work as an actor

and it was the time before you got emailed scripts

where you get printed, hard copy like of scripts

and like 120 pages long.

And I had this big pile of scripts to read

and the the thinnest one was Sons of Anarchy

'cause it was only about 50 some pages long.

And so I said, All right, I'll read that one first.

And just thought it was amazing.

I loved the script

and thought the character was like super cool

and the world just felt like fresh and original

and like nothing I'd really seen before.

And so I called my agent and I said,

I really like the script.

And he is like, Yeah, well we sent that

to you like three months ago, so you know,

it's probably too late.

But the writer, Kurt Sutter,

had really wanted you to read it,

like he'd sent it to you specifically.

And I said, Well yeah, but it'd be nice

if you told me that.

And he said, Yeah, well you weren't

answering your phone, dickhead.

So I went, Okay.

And so I said, Well just call him

and find out if the role's still available.

So he called him and they hadn't cast yet

and so I went and auditioned.

It was interesting as he'd see me in a film

while he was writing this about hooligans,

about British football hooligans called

Green Street hooligans.

And he thought if that guy can do an American accent,

then he's maybe my guy.

What does Charlie Hunnam use in his hair?

I add a little bit of Tancho,

which I guess is maybe Japanese.

It's like a lavender wax. Check it out, you can Google it.

Can Charlie Hunnam dance?

The answer is no.

Okay, I'm not sweating yet, so this is good. Right.

What is Charlie Hunnam's best movie?

[laughs] I don't know, I guess that's subjective.

I would say my best movie is The Lost City of Z,

followed by maybe The Gentleman.

I don't know, but I'll let you decide for that yourself.

What are Charlie Hunnam's hobbies?

Working, mainly.

What did Charlie Hunnam keep from SOA?

Everything that I could steal, I kept the bike,

I kept the cut, I kept the knife, I kept the rings,

I kept weird shit that made no sense.

Like a red plastic dragon that I didn't even like

and didn't even really know was in the set till the last day

and it wasn't nailed down, so I stole that too.

What music does Charlie Hunnam listen to?

I listen to everything.

So the fundamentals, the like cornerstone

of my musical journey would be Bob Dylan, Tom Waits,

Leonard Cohen, [babbling] Van Morrison.

Van Morrison was huge. That's when I was young.

And learning to smoke pot and learning the meaning of life

and all of those artists helped me a lot in, I don't know,

figuring out life.

That's all the boards. That's all my bullshit.

Thanks for having me. See you next time. [kisses]

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