Charlie Hunnam is promoting The Lost City of Z and the long-gestating Guy Ritchie movie, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. So that’s why Hunnam covers the April issue of Men’s Health, to promote those movies. Plus, Hunnam is constantly chatting with men’s fitness-and-health magazines because he’s something of a workout addict. He never says “addiction,” but the guy seems to work out a hell of a lot. As it turns out, he also believes that having sex as often as possible is a good workout (which is true, sex is good exercise). Some highlights from Men’s Health:
His high fitness level: “I try to do it all. I also try to make love as often as I can. That’s an important part of fitness.”
His fitness goals: “I’m interested in having a high fitness level across the board. Running, swimming, jumping rope, hiking, jiu-jitsu—I try to do it all. I also try to make love as often as I can. That’s an important part of fitness. There’s no reason you can’t be active at 70. I want to run up mountains at that age.”
Preparing for King Arthur: “[I] worked out like a motherf–ker.” He packed on 20 pounds of muscle by strength training and spent hours learning sword fighting and boxing. The movie’s five-minute final fight scene took five days to shoot, filming from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. “It’s not even as much the physical benefit of training; it’s the mental. When you’re training every day in a combat discipline, it just gives you that eye of the tiger. Then if someone acts aggressively toward you, I can run all the scenarios through my head—you know, like I’m going to step to the side and put an elbow through your face.”
Losing weight for The Lost City of Z: Then he lost nearly 40 pounds in eight weeks playing his next role—Colonel Percy Fawcett, an obsessive British explorer, in The Lost City of Z. Hunnam eliminated dairy, carbs, and sugar. Then he went vegan. The shoot was in humid 100-degree weather off the grid in the Colombian jungle. Hunnam says the biggest hardship was the isolation. He talked to no one off the set, not even his girlfriend, for four months.
Why he didn’t speak to his girlfriend: “People are all like, ‘that’s so Method of you.’ Maybe it is, but I was worried about the emotional breadth of what I had to portray. I had to access that on a day-to-day basis, so I put myself in the position of living it. I felt the fear, the loneliness.” ‘
He started smoking for Papillion: Hunnam puffed “like a madman” and sustained himself on coffee and nicotine for three months. “My body was a mess,. It’s not easy to quit smoking.” He’s currently using e-cigarettes to transition off.
He stopped smoking weed: One vice he did quit was smoking weed. He would burn through an ounce a week, but stopped in his early 30s. “In those stupid ways that we identify with ourselves, I felt like I was a Rasta. I was sort of proud at my enormous ability to smoke pot and function. But I realized I didn’t want to spend my life stoned.”
He’s not into fancy things or fame: “It was Socrates or one of those old bastards who said, ‘Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.’ It means nothing”
Telling “cyberbullies” to stop dissing his girlfriend: “The way I grew up, if you want to talk sh-t, talk sh-t to someone’s face and be prepared to fight.” He sees social media dividing society, and he despairs. Sometimes after a shoot, he reenters the world disconnected and feeling low.
He reconnects to the world through exercise: “We are supposed to be very active animals. It’s our DNA. Sweating is how I change my oil every day. I just feel happier, more positive, energized, and disciplined if I work out.. I train a lot every day because I’m f–king crazy.”
Meh. I think he’s probably a nice person in real life, but he seems rather exhausting, right? We can sigh and fantasize about Charlie Hunnam demanding to make love to us 24-7 for fitness reasons, but the reality is… he’s a total gymrat and he absolutely puts his work far above everything and everyone else. And I actually feel a little bit sorry for his girlfriend. He goes MIA for months because he’s so Method and… it doesn’t sound like he even explained himself to her. It’s gross.
Photos courtesy of Men’s Health.
God he’s so cheesy. His girlfriend is kind of weird looking too. King Arthur will flop.
lol he is cheesy. he’s hot, but i don’t find him interesting at all. and yes, his gf clearly had a lot of surgery done to her face, she has the typical LA face.
tbf though, iirc he and his gf have been together for absolute ages, so maybe they have a very strong relationship at the basis and him disappearing didn’t affect them (it seems like it didn’t, since they’re still together). i think that sometimes people who are used to be with their partners everyday, don’t really understand that in certain professions distance is something you live with and not necessarily a big deal because it’s your normality.
Interesting. I doubt theirs is a conventional relationship. I dont know if they are in an open relationship or if only he gets a passport or if its one of those where her self esteem is so worn down that she just cycles back to him when he returns but something tells me this is not a sexually exclusive thing on his end at least.
yeah, who knows. maybe they’re in an open relationship. but just in general, i meant that in some professions, like acting, being a musician, or working internationally etc. travelling and distance are just a part of it.
like, my bf is a musician, so depending on the work, sometimes he’s on tour for long stretches and we don’t always speak daily. many of my female friends who see their bf all the time are always asking me if it bothers me he’s away so much, or if i’m upset, and tbh i’m not. it’s my normal. and i’m independent anyway, the doing everything together type of relationship exhausts me, so what i have is fine.
my guess is that she wasn’t all that bothered by him going method, and also he’s probably exaggerating the story to sound cool. actors do it all the time, to promote their work.
The tractor shot is cheesy and weird. Actor + tractor is peak manliness? Right.
ZAMNNNNN girl… lol
yup – meanwhile Dornan is a household name….(50 Shady comments lol)
Yep, and if I were his g/f I woukd be SO turned off by the thought that whenever he made sexual overtures to me it was just part of his gym routine!
On the cover photo it looks like he is asking his teacher to go pee, please.
Lol! I think he’s incredibly attractive, physically speaking. But I don’t understand why in so many of his photoshoots they seem to want to capture him hunkering and lurching around. It just looks odd to me!
So, he had no contact with her for four months but he has sex all the tine as part of his workout.
I would want that explained more.
Is it still a workout if you only use one arm? Or are they in an open relationship? more words on this please.
Inquiring minds need to know.
He tries to make love “as often” as he can. So when he can’t, he won’t.
I appreciate the effort in trying to make a boring story spicy though!
But doesn’t that mess up his fitness routine? How does he compensate. We really do need all the details. Or is he seeking volunteers?
@Lightpurple
Maybe both arms take turns? Maybe he has a fitness coach and a sex coach? Are there any recommended positions? Is there a Fitma Sutra?
You don’t need to worry about me now. I lost it there for a while, but we are on the same wavelength now.
Lol thank you detritus, for this laugh today.
slowsnow, but… does he have a spotter for all these training sessions? I could also use very detailed details as LP has said, we really need to know everything before we can properly assist.
We wouldn’t want him to pull anything, well, not unless it was on purpose. I think LP or I can help out just in case. Many hands make a light load and all. Or perhaps just a quicker one?
Detritus, Men’s Health is not asking the right questions for sure. Lazy journalism. You would though – serious serious investigation and a helping hand in case of need.
I’m really only in it to make super proper ethics in celebrity journalism are followed. Very altruistic, am I.
I love the idea of working out as much as possible but it’s so naive of him to think that that is all it takes in order to ‘run up mountains’ when you’re 70. You can do all that but any injury or illness you might get along the way is out of your control. We’re only guests in our bodies, they’ll do what they want at the end of the day!
Very true, I have been unexpectedly sidelined a number of times and it sucks. But I think your chances of running up mountains is better when you’re fit compared to when you’re not and that was what I got from his comment. My grandmother was in really bad physical shape in the last decade of her life and she said her main regret was not listening to her doctor about keeping active instead of becoming more sedentary.
I had such a crush on Charlie, and still do as long as he doesn’t talk or uses his Jax accent from SOA cos he has lost the Geordie accent that I found so attractive, and now sounds like well a mix of Welsh, more north west of England and American which is just odd!
Yeah I guess I can see his appeal…when he doesn’t speak. 🙄
I was thinking gym rat until I read about the smoking. A self respecting gym rat would never smoke! I was expecting to read that smoked fake/herbal/non-nicotine cigarettes, like supposedly all the heavy smoker characters in Mad Men did.
TMI Charlie
I volunteer to be his personal trainer! (waves hand in the air)
to me it’s always funny when people say sex is exercise. we all have sex, or most of us do anyway, it just feels like tmi or maybe i’m just too british about it. it’s like saying that as part of my physical health, i keep my guts working properly by taking a dump everyday.
Yup, very British about it.
I’m sure that is something his girlfriend doesn’t care to hear, considering he ghosted her for four months last year while at work.
Gee, how romantic. /s
RPatz is in the same movie. Did he ghost FKA Twiggs? I doubt it. Not sure about LCoZ but I am looking forward to Arthur though, I like Guy Richie’s style.
he was interviewed on the red carpet, and said he did not lol
IDK, different strokes for different folks. I find his enthusiasm and commitment very attractive, but then again, I’m the same way – work hard, play hard. I work a ton and I don’t feel like a happy, healthy person unless I work out a ton, too. It doesn’t mean I don’t adore my husband and my kid or even that they are lesser priorities; it’s just the way you organize your life, you know?
*Massive eyeroll.* Uh, no wonder he feels low after shoots if he’s losing or gaining tons of weight, ignoring his loved ones, picking up smoking just for a role (???????) etc. He must be really fun at parties. I wonder how he would have honed his craft had he gone through with the 50 Shades role.
What a charmer.
Sex for fitness purposes? Yeah right. What a pig!
To be fair, I’ve heard a good number of celebrity women say that, too (for some reason they’re often in the fashion industry).
He does nothing for me. Repeating myself here but he always looks like he needs a shower and apparently that’s true in his case.
If my man ghosted me like that my a** would be on the next flight, cutting my way through the jungle with a dern machete till I found his dumba**. Like that chick from Wedding Crashers says, “Don’t ever leave me cause I’ll find you”.
He’s insanely hot but that hotness fades tremendously when he opens his mouth. I’ve seen a few interviews with him and he tries SO hard to be tough, it’s just so unattractive and immature.
shhh charlie shhh…just look pretty
Whenever people say things like this I automatically believe the opposite is true.
He probably just plays pocket hockey by himself everyday. I sprained my eyes rolling them at this interview.
Ok, super judgment here, buuuuttttttt
In my experience, guys who talk like this are over compensating. They didn’t have a gf in high school and its eating them, or they lost their virginity late, or they really grew into their looks. None of which actually matters, but they have this hangup about it and do this weird, ‘I am sexy sex and sex all the time with the good sex’ crap.
Hunnam needs to shhh. Less words, more guns and bum.
Yes yes and yes haha
He’s insanely hot and I don’t give a damn what-all he says (sexist, I know). The guy at my gas station looks just like him and I’ve actually pointed out the resemblance to him. I always go to that garage because of him.
Charlie, I doubt that your partners are okay with your viewing them as exercise equipment.