“I bow down to him”: Josh Hartnett names the greatest performance he’s ever seen
If ever there were an example of how fickle fame can be, or more specifically, how you can be a massive movie star one minute and then be the subject of ‘whatever happened to’ articles on the sidebar of shame, then it’s Josh Hartnett, who in the late 1990s and early 2000s was seemingly everywhere, and then vanished.
He didn’t literally vanish, obviously, because he’s not a magician, but back then, he was right at the top and appearing in some of the biggest films of the era. After a breakout role in the surprise Robert Rodriguez hit sci-fi The Faculty in 1998 straight after moving to Los Angeles, he followed it up with The Virgin Suicides with Kirsten Dunst which was a success with critics.
Hartnett was immediately in huge demand and barely into his 20s, and not much more than a year later he was cast in two big budget Hollywood blockbusters; Ben Affleck’s Pearl Harbor and Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down, one of which was very good and one of which was… not so good. You can probably work out which was which.
That might be slightly unfair on Pearl Harbor, though, which did actually make enormous money at the box office, it was just that critics were not impressed; while it was nominated for four Oscars, they were all in categories like ‘Best Sound’ and ‘Best Visual Effects’, and although Hartnett escaped from it relatively unscathed, it was still nominated for six Golden Raspberry Awards.
Black Hawk Down, on the other hand, proved to be one of the best war films of all time, Hartnett leading a star-packed cast and showing even at 22 that he deserved his place alongside talent like Orlando Bloom, Eric Bana and Ewan McGregor. The following year, Hartnett showed his versatility with the comedy 40 Days and 40 Nights, which was another hit, but as the next few years rolled by, things began to dip somewhat. He made some films which, while excellent like Lucky Number Slevin, flew under the radar, and then he experienced a long period of more than a decade without any kind of a hit.
In recent years, however, Hartnett has found himself back in favour, casting directors remembering what a talent he is and putting him in movies as important as Christopher Nolan’s multi-Oscar-winning Oppenheimer. He also led M Night Shyamalan’s 2024 word-of-mouth hit Trap and recently popped up in the chaotic culinary drama The Bear.
So it’s safe to say Hartnett has returned in some style, but there remains a director, or more specifically two, that he has yet to work under but would love to, and that’s the Coen brothers, who are at the top of his wishlist. One reason for that is the classic 1997 cult hit that was released in cinemas just as Hartnett was moving to Hollywood.
He told film writer Cindy Pearlman about the amazing lead performance at the heart of the movie, saying, “The other film I love is The Big Lebowski. It’s Jeff Bridges as The Dude. He’s just so good that I bow down to him. Jeff Bridges is that character, but he’s not playing the same guy he has played in other films. He just became The Dude.”
Bridges’ dressing gown-clad slacker became so synonymous with the era that it inspired thousands of Halloween fancy dress outfits and endless quotes. Hartnett added, “I don’t know how he did it, but he just transcended the character. He makes you think that Dude guy really exists. You wish you could meet him and go have a White Russian with him. Can you imagine having a drink with The Dude?”
Meanwhile, Hartnett has several projects underway, including The Long Home, a thriller starring and directed by James Franco.
