Charlie Hunnam

1980-present

Latest News: Charlie Hunnam to Play Killer Ed Gein in Monster

Charlie Hunnam calls Ed Gein “one of the more gentle monsters” to be featured on Netflix’s popular crime anthology, but he didn’t feel that way at first.

Hunnam, 45, portrays the infamous killer and grave robber in Monster: The Ed Gein Story, debuting October 3 on the streaming service. But during his initial research into Gein, the former Sons of Anarchy star was shaken by the atrocities he might need to portray onscreen.

“I had the nightmares before I started,” Hunnam told Variety. “Once I got into it, it was a little easier. But I, for a second, thought maybe I’d made a horrible mistake when I started doing my research and realizing just how despicable some of the stuff he did was. But you know, we tell a very, sort of, varied version, like an all encompassing version of who he was. So the gruesomeness, but there’s also a little bit of, I don’t want to say tenderness, but you see the human in him.”

Hunnam is the latest actor to lead the popular Ryan Murphy-led series. Evan Peters played Jeffrey Dahmer, and Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch followed as the Menendez brothers in previous iterations.

Season 3 also stars Laurie Metcalf as Augusta Gein, the killer's overbearing mother.

Born in 1980, Charlie Hunnam has been acting since he was 17. His first big role came in Russell T. Davies' British series Queer as Folk, before he moved to the U.S. for films such as Nicholas Nickleby (2002), Cold Mountain (2003) and Children of Men (2006). Hunnam's breakout role came in 2008 when he signed on to play Jax Teller on FX's crime drama Sons of Anarchy, which aired through 2014. Since then Hunnam has created a tradition of embodying hyper-masculine roles, including the sci-fi flick Pacific Rim (2013), the adventure drama The Lost City of Z (2016) and the epic fantasy King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017). In addition to acting, Hunnam is a screenwriter.

FULL NAME: Charles Matthew Hunnam
BORN: April 10, 1980
BIRTHPLACE: Newcastle Upon Tyne, England
SPOUSE: Katharine Towne (1999-2002)
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aries
HEIGHT: 6 ft.

Charles Matthew Hunnam was born on April 10, 1980, in Newcastle, England. His father, William, worked in the scrap metal industry and died in 2013, while his mother, Jane, a business owner, raised the actor and his older brother after the couple divorced when Hunnam was a toddler.

Hunnam described himself as “a little bit of a rebel” growing up and believed that toughness was crucial to his social status. This resulted in a scary incident at age 15, when he claims six people severely beat him. The actor said he was even in danger of losing his eye. “My head got put through a window, and it was a bad scene. And I did not like the way that made me feel,” Hunnam told Entertainment Tonight in 2017. “And I decided that I was never going to be in that situation again, so I set about learning to fight.” Hunnam carried that toughness into adulthood and practiced Brazilian jiu-jitsu, earning a blue belt in 2018.

As for his education and career prospects, Hunnam matriculated to the University of Cumbria, where he graduated with a film degree.

Hunnam's first major screen role was on Russell T. Davies’ British gay series Queer as Folk. On the show he played 15-year-old Nathan Maloney, a rebellious school kid who’s new to the gay scene but is full of confidence.

The young actor then appeared in the love story Whatever Happened to Harold Smith? (1999) before making his way across the pond to America, where he picked up a recurring role in WB’s Young Americans. He also had a quick stint on Fox’s Judd Apatow-helmed sitcom Undeclared, though the acclaimed show was canceled after one season.

Turning to film, Hunnam appeared opposite Katie Holmes in the panned psychological thriller Abandon (2002). He had better luck with the Charles Dickens-inspired drama Nicholas Nickleby (2002), in which he played the title role, as well as the Civil War film Cold Mountain (2003). In the latter, he played the psychotic lieutenant Bosie, who duels with the protagonist Inman (Jude Law).

Hunnam’s flair for depicting troubled characters continued after Cold Mountain, his follow-ups being a Cockney-accented hooligan in Pete Dunham’s indie football drama Green Street (2005) and a corrupt gang member in the dystopian thriller Children of Men (2006).

Jax Teller in Sons of Anarchy

Charlie Hunnam speaks during a 2013 Sons of Anarchy panel event in Beverly Hills, California.

As Hunnam continued to star in bigger projects, his rounds in Hollywood paid off: In 2008, he was cast in one of his most memorable roles as gang leader Jackson “Jax” Teller in the FX crime drama Sons of Anarchy, about an outlaw motorcycle club set in a fictional town in California. The series became one of the highest rated shows for the network, which ran its course through 2014. Still, Hunnam admittedly had a hard time saying goodbye to the show and his character.

“It was actually quite emotional for me, living and loving that guy for eight years, to have to finally put him to bed,” he told Glamour UK. “I found myself going back to set a lot. I knew the security guards and for a couple of days said, ‘Oh, I forgot something,’ so they’d let me onto the set, and I’d just walk around at night because I wanted to be in that environment and go through a personal process of saying goodbye. After a couple of nights I didn’t really need the alibi to get in, and then after a while I just said, ‘OK, enough, this is done.’”

While on Anarchy, Hunnam also starred as the lead alongside Idris Elba in Guillermo del Toro’s blockbuster Pacific Rim (2013), a sci-fi drama about humans operating giant humanoids to battle sea monsters from another dimension. The actor teamed up with del Toro again for the gothic horror flick Crimson Peak (2015), which found a solid audience and generally fared well with critics.

The Lost City of Z and King Arthur

In between these projects, it was announced that Hunnam was set to star as Christian Grey in the film version of E.L. James’ erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey. However, due to multiple scheduling conflicts, Hunnam reluctantly bowed out and later called the ordeal “the worst professional experience of my life.” Jamie Dornan ultimately starred as Grey in the franchise alongside Dakota Johnson.

“I called [director Sam Taylor-Johnson], and we both cried our eyes out on the phone for 20 minutes,” he told V Man magazine in 2015. “I needed to tell her that this was not going to work. … There was a lot of personal stuff going on in my life that left me on real emotional shaky ground and mentally weak. I just got myself so f–king overwhelmed and I was sort of having panic attacks about the whole thing.”

Hunnam bounced back playing British geographer Percy Fawcett in the biographical drama The Lost City of Z (2016). He also collaborated with Guy Ritchie on the film King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017), though critics generally panned the project. Hunnam enjoyed a better reception playing French convicted murderer Henri Charrière in the lauded Papillon (2017), which co-starred Rami Malek.

Hunnam found another opportunity to work with Fifty Shades director Taylor-Johnson when he signed on for A Million Little Pieces (2018), an adaptation of the controversial 2003 novel written by James Frey. The actor followed with a busy 2019 in which he appeared in four features, including the action film Triple Frontier and the violent comedy The Gentlemen.

Hunnam’s most recent projects include the movies Last Looks (2021) and Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023), as well as the AppleTV+ limited series Shantaram.

Playing Ed Gein in Netflix’s Monster Anthology

In 2024, Netflix announced Hunnam would portray infamous killer Ed Gein in the third season of its popular Monster crime anthology, which previously examined serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and the Menendez brothers. In November of that year, the first images of Hunnam as Gein emerged.

Hunnam told Tudum about his physical transformation for the role, losing 30 pounds to develop a lighter frame. “I spent a lot of time thinking about where his energy was, that he’s not particularly confident or, like, front-foot type of energy … How to not take up a lot of space, not to be sort of front and center and too confident in my physicality was really important,” he said.

The third season, officially titled Monster: The Ed Gein Story, premieres October 3, 2025, on Netflix.

Outside of acting, Hunnam is a screenwriter. Before he earned the lead role on Sons of Anarchy, he sold a screenplay about Vlad the Impaler to a major film distribution company. Later, it was reported he was developing films on American drug lord Edgar Valdez Villareal and gypsy culture in British society.

In November 2022, Hunnam announced his wish to fully pivot to screenwriting and had begun working on a TV show loosely based on his late father. “I’m by no means going to stop acting but I’m going to try and only act in things that I write,” he said.

Charlie Hunnam and Morgana McNelis attend the 2025 Emmy Awards in Los Angeles.

Since 2005, Hunnam has been in a relationship with artist and jewelry designer Morgana McNelis. The pair made their first public appearance at a Sons of Anarchy screening in 2008, but have kept their connection relatively private since.

Hunnam said in 2020 he is “sort of indifferent” to legal marriage, but later clarified that he and McNelis already have a similar relationship. “I’m, like, so romantic, and the reality is I sort of consider myself married,” Hunnam said. “I’ve been with my girlfriend for 14 years. I suppose what I was trying to articulate [is] the official government sanction of it doesn’t mean anything to me, but the romance of it means an enormous amount.”

Case in point, Hunnam previously married actress Katharine Towne in 1999, but the couple divorced three years later.

Celebrity Net Worth estimates Hunnam’s total fortune around $20 million as of September 2025.

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