Metal suit weighed heavily on the star of ‘Pacific Rim’
Charlie Hunnam was destined early on to be on a show called “Sons of Anarchy.”
“I was always a weird, existential little kid,” says the 33-year-old Brit, who plays Jackson “Jax” Teller on the FX biker series. “I feel like I’ve been on the precipice of a total existential crisis since I was 5 years old.”
The whole world is in crisis in his movie “Pacific Rim,” opening Friday.
“I’m here to save the world this summer,” Hunnam says. “Someone has to do it.”
In the sci-fi adventure by director Guillermo del Toro, Earth is being invaded by giant sea monsters who come up through a crack in the ocean floor. Hunnam plays a pilot who gets into a heavy metal suit and steps into a killer robot to take out the creatures.
“When the time came to cast ‘Pacific Rim,’ the studio said, ‘Who do you see in the movie.’ I said ‘Charlie Hunnam,’ ” Del Toro says. “Charlie can play effortlessly heroic.”
To wear his fighting costume, Hunnam had to make life concessions.
“Wearing that suit was like someone constantly pushing down on my entire body. It was 30 minutes to put the suit on and 50 minutes to take it off,” he says. “The preproduction was quite short. No one thought of putting a pee flap in, which was unfortunate. Plus, the suit is really hot and you have to drink a lot of water.”
Born in Newcastle, England, Hunnam grew up during grim times. “My town was the pillar of the Industrial Revolution, but then everything dried up. All the coal mines shut down and the cotton factories got outsourced. The city closed up,” he says.
“I looked around my hometown as a boy and thought, ‘Everyone is so engaged all day in the brutal, gritty reality of survival here. What is inside these people? What did they grow up dreaming of doing with their lives?’ ”
“My dream was to be transported into the world of the movies I loved as a boy,” he says. “You know what they say about dreams coming true. The universe gives you a pinch, and if you work hard enough you get a major nudge.”
Big Picture News Inc.