SCREEN star Charlie Hunnam is going back to his roots . . . to make a movie about his dad.
The Newcastle-born actor, who rose to fame after starring in the controversial TV series Queer As Folk, now lives in Hollywood where he has a regular appearance in the hard-hitting series Sons of Anarchy, which centres around motorbike gangs.
But he’ll be swapping bikers for Byker, Newcastle, very soon, after revealing how he’s heading home to make a film based on his dad Billy’s life growing up on Tyneside.
Charlie, 30, will write the script for the low-budget project – the second script he has penned recently.
Later this year he’ll see the script he titled “Vlad” – the true story of the historical leader Vlad the Impaler, the real-life inspiration for Dracula – turned into an £85m movie called Blood by Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company.
The former Heaton Manor School pupil said: “I am going to sit down and write something, a very, very small story.
“The budget for Vlad is about £85m. I am going to write a very small and easily financeable story about my dad, actually, growing up in Newcastle. So I’m going to go and spend some time with my dad and write that story.
“I am thinking I may be able to produce that in a more hands-on way in terms of hiring the director that I want and hiring an actor to play my dad and stuff, and actually fully produce that film, which would be great.
“He has a really, really interesting life and is a real tough guy from a very, very tough corner of England.
“It’s taken him a while because he is very, very private man and it’s taken a while to get his head around it.
“But after he read Vlad and saw that I was very, very serious about writing, he kind of softened up a bit and now he is going to help me.”
Charlie will be able to make the return trip because two films he was due to film this summer – The Stencil Person and The Last Full Measure – fell through.
The star said the collapse of both movies has left him frustrated.
He said: “Both of those films were being made outside of the studio system and they just fell apart at the eleventh hour.
“I just feel really, really fortunate that I have a regular gig in the shape of Sons of Anarchy. It’s always a heartbreak when you put a lot of time and effort into a creative process and nothing comes of it.”
"Sons Of Anarchy"
"Last Full Measure"
"Stanford Prison Experiement"
