Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam has revealed if he would play legendary cinematic super-spy James Bond if offered the role. PEOPLE asked the 40-year-old Newcastle upon Tyne native if he was open to playing 007 and replied that he would “100 percent” do it. “I would be so flattered and honored to be considered to play James Bond as an Englishman,” he went on to say.
Hunnam then added, “But my intuition tells me that I shouldn’t be waiting for that phone call to come. I think there are many people ahead of me on that list.” He also addressed rumors of him being considered for the role, calling them “external chatter” but expressing gratitude to his fans for believing he could take on the role. “It’s very flattering sort of fan dialogue,” he said, then going on to clarify that he has never had any official conversations about auditioning. “Nobody’s ever, on a professional level from within the industry, brought that up to me.”
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While he is not, in any formal sense, on a path to playing James Bond, Hunnam does appreciate his fans championing him, which he believes can possibly have an impact professionally in some cases. “As much as people want to talk about me playing James Bond, please continue,” he said. “Maybe that’s the genesis of these things. Maybe fan chatter leads to industry people actually talking about it in a more serious way.”
Even if he isn’t the next actor to take on 007, Hunnam does have a line on who he thinks will take over after Daniel Craig. “The person that I hear about in that conversation is Tom Hardy,” he revealed. “I hear that he’s really the front runner [to play James Bond next].” Hunnam then added, “I think that would be sensational. I’m an enormous Tom Hardy fan so I would love to see him as James Bond.”
Next up for Hunnam, fans can catch him in Jungleland, a boxing drama that he describes as a “love story between two brothers.” He went on to explain, “I came from an environment where men didn’t really have the capacity or the skillset … to really articulate their love to each other. They sort of demonstrated it in weird, wonderful and sometimes negative ways. And that’s really what I was drawn to.”
Hunnam added, “It was such a sense of tragedy between these two guys that you can clearly see that they absolutely love each other and that they are each other’s world. And yet the ways in which that gets expressed is so inelegant that it’s quite tragic. That felt personal to me and I really wanted the opportunity to explore it.” Jungleland will be available on VOD platforms starting Nov. 10 and open in select theaters on Nov. 6.
