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He went onto to star in notable movies with a lead role in the classic British tale of 'Nicholas Nickleby' (pictured left) and a smaller part in the Oscar winning 'Cold Mountain' before gaining attention for his role in 'Green Street Hooligans'.

Set in the world of fanatical British football fans (some say hooligans) and co-starring Elijah Wood the movie found success worldwide despite its violence and graphic language.

As for ‘Cold Mountain’, it followed his personal philosophy, “I always think it's better to take a smaller role in a great film rather than a leading role in something that you don't have complete faith in,” he has said.

While Hunnam's next role continued the trend of violent, out of control characters it also introduced him to the world of two-wheels. It was on the set of ‘Children of Men’ that Charlie Hunnam learned to ride a motorcycle for scenes depicting his character of Patric, a member of the "The Fishes" who rode a dirt bike during the movie.

“I’d done you know only dirt bikes – not out of kind of desire to ride to myself, but you know through professional obligations I’d ridden on Children of Men. I had to ride a dirt bike on that. So that’s where my dirt bike you know introduction came from, but I’d always been much more interested in big dogs.”

At the time ‘Children of Men' was released Charlie said his role in the movie was the final part in his ‘trilogy of mad men’, "I played the psycho in Cold Mountain, my character in Green Street  (pictured right with co-star Elijah Wood) is fairly psychotic and now I've got this role."

With the advantage of retrospect it could be said many of his previous roles were preparing Hunnam for the violent world motorcycle gangs live in, with the personal daring and confidence to lead one. But how close is Charlie Hunnam to the wild characters he plays on the screen?

“I very, very rarely leave my house, but I have a great social life. I hang out with my friends, and I basically am very, very driven to work,” he told a reporter, “I read everything that comes through the agency, like ten scripts a week.”

Since his passion has been for film work most of those are movie scripts, but after an insistent agent Sons of Anarchy made it to the reading pile.

“I took a look at it and just thought the quality of the writing was just as good as the majority of screen plays that I’d been reading. I just got very excited about the whole thing. I thought that it was such a seldom-explored world, the world of outlaw motorcycle clubs and it wasn’t a world that I was particularly familiar with, but instantly got very interested in,” Charlie noted.

It’s not just fictitious motorcycle gangs keeping Charlie busy. In between filming ‘Children of Men’ and ‘Sons of Anarchy’ he wrote and sold his film, ‘Vlad’, the project currently at Summit Entertainment with Eric Feig and Plan B producing it.

“It’s based on the true story of Vlad the Impaler, Charlie explains, “You know the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a 15th century king living in Wallachia, which is one of the principalities of present day Romania. And it’s all about the Last Crusade and him opposing the expansion of the Ottoman Empire.”

Already halfway through the second draft of another script, Hunnam’s working on a starting a third project, “So whether I’m acting or writing, I’m going to keep myself busy,” he says.

Bearing in mind Charlie Hunnam is an English person playing an American motorcycle gang member, the accent itself is adding work other actors don’t have to face.

“It’s something that I always felt confident that I could do you know given the right environment,” he says, “You know it’s just a process.”

Speaking about his current project, Sons of Anarchy, ”I have to go home and do two and a half to three hours work because I look over everything and then you know have to run the scenes a lot and figure out the right ways – you know the ways to deliver it all in the American dialect. And then if I have any problems with that, I call my dialect coach and she’ll talk me through some difficult sound combinations and stuff.”

“Because I’ve traveled around so much [my accent] doesn’t really exist anywhere in the world. It’s a big mixture of both northern and southern English and then a lot of California. So generally no matter what project I’m doing – whether it be England or America – I’m always having to do some accent,” Charlie says laughing.