Charlie Hunnam

Charlie Hunnam plays Jax Teller in Sons of Anarchy, the club's vice-president and a new father beginning to question what its loyalties require of him. Jax needs the physical confidence to belong in that room, but he also needs to look as though something is eating away at him. Hunnam supplies both. The charm is easy to see; the anger takes up more and more space in a conversation.

Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, Hunnam first became widely known through the British series Queer as Folk, playing Nathan Maloney. The American comedy Undeclared followed before the much longer commitment to Jax. His later television lead in Shantaram, as Lin Ford, takes him into another story about belonging, reinvention and the trouble a man carries with him.

His films include Green Street, Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim and Crimson Peak, James Gray's The Lost City of Z and Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and The Gentlemen. Those parts give him room for a lighter touch or a very different kind of endurance. Jax remains the role that makes fullest use of his mixture of appeal and volatility.