Why Does Charlie Hunnam Have An American Accent (And Why Is It Embarrassing)?

If you're among the fans who fell for Charlie Hunnam during his seven season tenure playing Jackson "Jax" Teller on "Sons of Anarchy," odds are pretty good that you simply assumed he was an American actor. And who could be blamed for doing so, as Hunnam captured the tough guy American West archetype with ease.

It's a testament to Hunnam's work on the bruising biker drama that many fans never knew he was born and raised in England. But as the actor hilariously admitted during a recent retrospective with Vanity Fair, by the time "Sons of Anarchy" ended, he'd been playing an American so long he had trouble shaking the fake accent. And that apparently proved problematic when he landed a followup role as a decidedly English character. "It's so embarrassing to say as an Englishman," Hunnam told Vanity Fair, adding, "but I'd been working in America for so long, when I got 'King Arthur' I had to hire a dialect coach to help me sound English again."

Thankfully, with the help of that coach Hunnam was able to regain his English-ness before he stepped foot on the set of "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword." While the film didn't exactly become the hit Hunnam had likely hoped for, the actor's accent was mercifully not singled out by critics as one of its issues.    

Charlie Hunnam's various on-screen accents have been fodder for fans in several projects past, with some citing his Cockney accent in 2005's "Green Street Hooligans" as particularly problematic. Over the years, Hunnam has also has noticed even his real life accent is a bit odd, telling an Australian morning show in 2022 he's never fully shaken his American affectation. "I have a strange accent myself, it's half English, half American," he said, "everybody, my entire life, has thought I was Australian."

Hunnam made that claim while promoting his role as an escaped Australian convict in the Apple TV+ series "Shantaram." And he'd go on to admit that, despite seeming parallels to his real world accent, he had a lot of trouble perfecting the Australian dialect. "The accent is very difficult," he noted, adding that's largely because Aussies, "make sounds that don't exist anywhere in the world!" Hunnam said that last part only half in jest, soon admitting he needed a lot of help to make his accent believable, noting, "I had a wonderful dialect coach and a lot of Australian friends who helped me."

Despite everyone's best efforts, Hunnam believes he only got, "about 75% of the way there," in perfecting the Aussie dialect. The actor goes on to allude he still worked hard to get it right in part because he's spent considerable time in Australia, regularly visiting members of his extended family in Melbourne. And we can only imagine what the Aussie side of the Hunnam family thinks of his dialect in "Shantaram."