Josh Hartnett reveals why he turned his back on Hollywood
After his breakthrough, actor Josh Hartnett seemed destined to become an A-list star, but after growing disillusioned with fame, Hartnett turned his back on the big-budget movies of Hollywood and instead chose to escape out of the spotlight.
The Minnesota-born star has now revealed why he chose to keep such a low profile years after enjoying early 2000s blockbuster success in the likes of the war movies Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down and Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbour.
After that early success, during which time he also turned down the role of Superman on two occasions, Hartnett departed Los Angeles for rural England because he felt that there had been an “unhealthy” obsession with him in the press which was making him “unhappy”.
“There were incidents,” Harnett said in a recent interview with The Guardian. “People showed up at my house. People that were stalking me.” At one point, an obsessive fan of the actors turned up at one of his premieres with a gun claiming to be his father. “It was a weird time,” he added. “And I wasn’t going to be grist for the mill.”
Still, a number of high profile job offers kept coming through the door, but Hartnett felt that he’d rather be involved in smaller productions, noting, “I just didn’t want my life to be swallowed up by my work. And there was a notion at that time you just kind of give it all up.”
According to Hartnett, a number of his contemporary actors got “obliterated” by the Hollywood lifestyle, which he certainly didn’t want for himself. As the 2000s progressed, Hartnett starred in the likes of Mozart and the Whale, Resurrecting the Champ and The Black Dahlia, which he admits were not all “successful”.
However, such movies represented a change in professional tact from Hartnett, who explained, “I was always swinging for something that was outside what people expected from me.” The actor did almost feature in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy and The Prestige, but the highly coveted roles ended up going to Christian Bale.
Still, Hartnett refused to beat himself up about missing out, feeling that there was something more important to life. “I’ve figured out that as much as you’re worried about curating your career to things you’re interested in, I don’t believe that’s the most important thing anymore,” he said. “It’s about finding people who you really trust.”
Hartnett’s latest movie sees him star in M Night Shyamalan‘s highly-anticipated new production, Trap, set to arrive in cinemas on August 9th. In the film, Hartnett plays a father who takes his daughter to a pop concert to see her favourite singer, Lady Ravel. However, a sting police operation descends on the venue as they hunt for notorious serial killer, The Butcher, and in a typical Shyamalan twist, the trailer revealed this to be an evil alter-ego of Hartnett’s character.
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