Charlie Hunnam adopted two kittens to help his mental health while he was playing Ed Gein.

The 46-year-old actor took on the role of the murderer and grave robber in Ryan Murphy's new Netflix series Monster: The Ed Gein Story and he's revealed he decompressed during filming by playing for hours with two young cats he rehomed while shooting the series in Chicago, Illinois.

Charlie told The Hollywood Reporter: "I adopted a couple of kittens while I was in Chicago for the second half of it [filming], and I was staying in a really nice hotel ...

"While we were in actual Chicago, I was staying at the Four Seasons ... So I had this like really lovely room in the Four Seasons, and they were so kind to me.

"And I came home one day, I'm like: 'Listen, I know this is a wild card, but like, I just adopted these two kittens. Can I can I keep them in my room?'

"And they were like: 'Yeah, tell us anything you need'.

Charlie went on to reveal he hired a catsitter to look after his new pets while he was filming and he loved coming home to them after he finished work.

He said: "I'm a very serious pet owner. I had to hire a cat sitter because obviously I work 14, 15 hours a day. I wasn't going to just leave them alone for that period of time, and so then I had a cat sitter with them for like eight hours.

"They went from the streets to really coming up in life and living that Four Seasons life with a full time cat sitter playing with them. So I would go home from the darkest realm and just literally play with kittens for three hours."

It comes after Charlie previously admitted he is a "frustrated writer/director" despite his successful acting career.

Speaking on the Prestige Junkie podcast, Charlie reflected on how his career took an unexpected turn after an early acting role led him away from filmmaking and into acting full-time.

Talking about his early ambitions, he said: "I went to film school wanting to be a writer/director. I spent all my entire youth watching film, and thinking about film and storytelling and always thought I would be a director."

Charlie explained that his path shifted after he was cast in Byker Grove, the long-running children's television series filmed in Newcastle, North East England, where he grew up.

He said: "And then I got an opportunity somewhat randomly, although I don't think these things are random, to do an acting role in a show called Byker Grove, which was a children's TV show where I shot in Newcastle, where I'm from. And that led me to getting an agent, that led me to getting [TV show] Queer As Folk, which was my second ever audition.

"By the time I was 18, just about to turn 19, I'd already moved to America and was pursuing acting as a career. And here we are, like 27 years later, I'm still a frustrated writer-director."