Charles Matthew Hunnam (/ˈhʌnəm/; born 10 April 1980) is an English actor. He is known for his roles as Nathan Maloney in the Channel 4 drama Queer as Folk (1999–2000), Lloyd Haythe in the Fox comedy series Undeclared (2001–2002), the title role in Nicholas Nickleby (2002), Pete Dunham in Green Street (2005), Jackson "Jax" Teller in the FX drama series Sons of Anarchy (2008–2014) for which he was twice nominated for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series, Raleigh Becket in Pacific Rim (2013), Percy Fawcett in The Lost City of Z (2017), and the title role in Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017).
Hunnam was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, on 10 April 1980. His father, William "Billy" Hunnam (1952–2013), was a junk seller and alleged gangster who left the house when Charlie was two years old. His mother is Jane Bell, a ballet dancer and business owner. Hunnam has said that she did a very good job at being a single mother. He has an older brother named William and two younger half brothers on his mother's side named Oliver and Christian. At age 12, when his mother remarried, he moved to the village of Melmerby, Cumbria. One of his grandmothers painted portraits. Hunnam was diagnosed with dyslexia, which makes it difficult for him to read and write and suffers from mysophobia, fear of germs and dirt in general. During his adolescence, he played rugby and fought with his classmates, so he was expelled from Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Penrith, Cumbria, which forced him to study and to take exams from his home. After that, instead of going to university, he decided to go to the Cumbria College of Art and Design in Carlisle (now part of the University of Cumbria) to study Performing Arts, and graduated with a degree in the theory and history of film with a side in performing arts, with the idea of writing and directing his own films.