Charlie Hunnam, From “Queer As Folk” Heartthrob To Netflix’s Scariest Role Yet
He started as the boy everyone wanted on Queer As Folk.
Charlie Hunnam was just 18 when Russell T Davies cast him as 15-year-old Nathan Maloney in the original British Queer As Folk. The year was 1999. The Channel 4 series followed the lives of gay men in Manchester, and it changed television. Hunnam’s Nathan was confident, a little reckless and completely magnetic. He was the boy next door who wandered into Canal Street and never looked back.
At DNA, we’ve covered Hunnam’s connection to the show a few times. His dad once asked if he was gay after watching the series, and the cast even spilled the tea on that infamous rimming scene 25 years later. The show ran for only 10 episodes across two series, but its impact was massive. It spawned an American remake and is now considered a queer classic.
Then he suited up for Pacific Rim
After Queer As Folk, Hunnam moved to the United States. Roles in Nicholas Nickleby, Cold Mountain and Green Street followed. Then came Sons Of Anarchy in 2008, and seven seasons as outlaw biker, Jax Teller. But it was Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim in 2013 that put him on the global blockbuster map, with the film grossing US411 million worldwide.
In Pacific Rim, Hunnam played Raleigh Becket, a pilot who operates a giant mech to fight enormous creatures from another dimension. The role showed a completely different side of him. Physical, intense and a long way from Nathan Maloney. We’ve even debated who would have been the hotter Christian Grey after he famously dropped out of Fifty Shades Of Grey.
His latest role is his darkest
Hunnam now stars in Monster: The Ed Gein Story, the third season of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s Netflix anthology series. He plays the real-life serial killer Ed Gein, whose crimes in 1950s Wisconsin inspired Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence Of The Lambs.
In a recent cover story for Netflix’s Tudum magazine, Hunnam described how he first got the role. He went in thinking it was a general meeting with Murphy, only to be offered the part two hours in. “I was so taken by his enthusiasm,” Hunnam said. “There was nothing jaded or tired about him.”
His performance has earned Golden Globe, Actor Award, and Critics Choice nominations. He will also return for the next season of Monster, playing Andrew Borden in a series focused on Lizzie Borden.
Why we still appreciate Charlie Hunnam
Born on 10 April 1980 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, Hunnam has built a career that stretches from one of the most important queer television moments of the 1990s to one of the biggest action franchises of the 2010s and now a critically acclaimed Netflix role. That range is rare. From Nathan Maloney to Raleigh Becket to Ed Gein, Hunnam has never played it safe, and that’s exactly why he still matters nearly three decades into his career.
