Charlie Hunnam has written an open letter to his fans, asking them to stop criticising his long-time girlfriend Morgana McNelis. The star said that a "group of immature girls" have been posting messages about his partner online, both speculating about the couple's relationship and making derogatory comments about her appearance.
"I would respectfully ask you to stop doing this," Charlie wrote. "She is an intelligent, beautiful, kind person who just tried to live a simple life and has nothing to do with the entertainment industry."
Charlie Hunnam asked fans to stop criticising his girlfriend
The actor continued to say that he didn't mind anyone criticising him, but urged for them to leave his girlfriend of 11 years alone.
"What is most confusing is that these negative and totally unprovoked attacks appear to be coming from the people who call themselves my fans. Think about the logic of this for a moment," Charlie wrote. "This is a girl I love very much and have spent the last 11 years of my life with and hope to spend the next 60 years.
"She has been my loyal and supportive partner long before I had any success or money. Why would you attack her out of admiration for me? It makes no sense."
The couple have been together for 11 years
Charlie had sent the message to Tina Lou, a friend who maintains his Facebook fan page, although some questioned whether the post was genuinely from the actor – prompting him to film a video explaining his actions.
"I asked her to post a message for me," Charlie said. "It comes from me. The fact you [she is] getting harassed for doing that, is sort of the direct opposite of the message that I was trying to convey, which is simply that life can be very difficult without people going out of their way to be nasty to one another… try to be a little more kind.
"I don't do social media… the genesis of it was a way to create a forum for people to make new friends… to express different ideas… not a new forum for bullying which seems unfortunately to be an unpleasant side effect of it."
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