When we speak to Charlie Hunnam, thankfully, he has returned to his usual handsome self after six months in torment, during which he dropped 30 lbs to portray cross-dressing, grave-robbing serial killer Ed Gein. Gein, who went on a killing spree near his home town in Wisconsin in the 1950s, was so twisted he would even inspire Hitchcock's Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs, having used human flesh to build himself female "body suits," lampshades and couches. Certainly, there were moments of regret for Charlie, 45, having initially enthusiastically agreed to play a man with such a macabre legacy in Netflix series Monster: The Ed Gein Story.
"Once I said yes to this, I thought I'd made a horrible mistake," admits the British actor, adding how he panicked after he began researching Gein. "I knew vaguely the headlines, that there’d been this man in Wisconsin who had made furniture out of skin. But then I just thought there might be no coming back from this and it would be so dark to inhabit this character," he says, teasing how Monster creator Ryan Murphy - whose previous two Monster series featured Jeffrey Dahmer and the Menendez brothers - had "tricked" him into accepting the role after agreeing to meet "under the auspices of just having a general meeting".
"He's very cunning," he says with a laugh. “I was writing something at that point, so having exposure to Ryan was very exciting, so I could pick his brain a little bit. And then in this really surprising moment, Ryan said, ‘Well, do you think you would like to play him?’ And this seemed like such an incredible gift at a moment in my career that I desperately needed to feel better about the quality of the work that I was doing," recalls the Geordie actor, whose previous roles include Sons of Anarchy, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and The Lost City of Z star.
“I almost felt like ‘careful what you wish for’, because then I was given what seemed like an impossible challenge to turn myself into this guy.”
© COURTESY OF NETFLIXDuring the process, it was Charlie himself who decided he would speak in a higher, more effeminate voice - echoing Gein’s mother’s disappointment that he wasn’t born a girl - at the same time using facial prosthetics and losing weight for his key scenes wearing women’s lingerie.
If Gein found it difficult to form relationships - his strict religious mother warning him off “wanton women” - then Charlie has found no shortage of love in his own life, briefly wed, aged 18, to actress Katharine Towne, eloping to Las Vegas three weeks after meeting on an audition for Dawson’s Creek.
© COURTESY OF NETFLIXGoing on to date model Sophie Dahl and actress Stella Parker, he has been in a relationship with jewellery designer Morgana McNelis for the past two decades and the couple share a home in the Hollywood Hills.
© Getty ImagesHe had plenty of resources in uncovering the real Gein. “He had been in a hospital for the criminally insane for 30 years and there were 120 different reports written about him. But in just trying to get to not necessarily focus on what he did but trying to understand the man behind the monster.” Charlie, who is currently filming a fourth Monster series, Lizzie Borden, in which he plays Lizzie’s father, with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening’s daughter Ella Beatty, in the title role.
The actor, who got his first big break as a teen in Channel 4 drama, Queer as Folk, keenly understands the disturbing power of film and TV.
“I had my share of traumatic experiences growing up, watching films that I was too young to watch,” he says. “I was always afraid of the abstract, some terrible sense of silence that all of the boogeymen reside in in the darkness. And just an intrinsic, primordial fear of something lurking out in the shadows.”
Interview by Gill Pringle
