Charlie Hunnam Admits He Had No Interest in One of His Big Movie Roles

Charlie Hunnam has spoken openly about a role in his career that he admits he just didn’t care about.

The actor, who stars as the infamous serial killer Ed Gein in the new Netflix series Monster: The Ed Gein Story, told Variety that despite his many lead roles, there’s one film he had no personal connection to.

Hunnam first became widely known for his role in FX’s Sons of Anarchy, a drama about a motorcycle gang inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

After the show ended in 2014, he adopted a “one for them, one for me” approach, alternating between commercial films and passion projects.

But when it came to 2013’s Pacific Rim, directed by Guillermo del Toro, Hunnam admitted he had zero emotional investment. “I couldn’t care less about giant robots fighting giant monsters. I read the script, and I had no emotional experience with it at all,” he told Variety. Despite that, he agreed to take the part, saying “I thought it was a great opportunity to work with a director that I really like.”

Pacific Rim is a sci-fi action film set in the future where humanity battles enormous sea monsters called Kaiju using giant robots called Jaegers. Hunnam played Raleigh Becket, a former Jaeger pilot pulled out of retirement to help fight the monsters alongside rookie pilot Mako Mori. The movie also stars Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, and Ron Perlman.

The film received generally positive reviews. Rotten Tomatoes reports a 72% approval rating, and Metacritic gives it a score of 65 out of 100. Critics praised the movie’s visuals, action sequences, and del Toro’s creative vision.

Robbie Collin from The Daily Telegraph gave it five out of five stars, saying watching the film was like “rediscovering a favorite childhood cartoon.” Roger Ebert called it a “crazed grab bag of a movie that does everything to keep us laughing except hit us over the head with a rubber chicken.”

However, not all reviews were glowing. The Guardian criticized the story as “wafer-thin psychodrama” and Time magazine called the action sequences 45 minutes of excitement “encased in 90 minutes of yawnsome.” Some critics also noted that Hunnam’s performance was the weakest link in the cast.

Even with mixed reviews, Pacific Rim was a commercial success and has become a well-known entry in the monster movie genre. Hunnam’s experience highlights that even successful actors sometimes take roles purely for the chance to work with a respected director, not necessarily out of personal passion for the project.

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