Josh Hartnett names his two definitive movies: “Maybe it’s because they’re more niche”
When it comes to watching movies, opinions are entirely subjective. Sure, the vast majority of audiences agree that certain films are brilliant. But, when it comes to cinema outside the realm of the classics, the verdict of an average cinemagoer can diverge wildly from that of the next person, even when watching the same movie. For the average actor, such as Josh Hartnett, this is what contributes to unexpected entries in their filmography being beloved by a cult audience, even if the broader critical community decided at the time of release that they were, to put it mildly, no good.
Over the years, several actors have spoken with pleasant surprise about the movies that fans or people on the street most often talk to them about. For instance, before he finally made a sequel nine years after the first movie came out, Ben Affleck claimed the film he heard mentioned most often by his fans was 2016’s autism-centric action flick, The Accountant. Now, that movie was a decent-sized success at the box office upon release, but the critical reaction was muted, and then it seemed to disappear into the void.
However, after a substantial number of fans told him how much they loved the first Christian Wolff adventure, Affleck took a gamble on this anecdotal evidence that a dedicated Accountant fanbase had developed on DVD and streaming. In 2025, this gamble paid off when The Accountant 2 made $103million at the box office and broke streaming records on Amazon Prime Video.
Similarly, Tilda Swinton once revealed that when she encounters fans worldwide, the film mentioned more than any other is Constantine, the 2005 comic book adaptation in which she played the androgynous Archangel Gabriel. Again, that film was largely dismissed by critics, but 20 years after its release, it seems to be still finding viewers, whereas she rarely hears anybody gush about her Oscar-winning turn in Michael Clayton.
As for Hartnett, who receded from the Hollywood spotlight in the 2020s before making a triumphant return to prominence in the ’20s, he once revealed to Elle magazine that he is most often asked about two of his films. The first is The Virgin Suicides, the ethereal 1999 Sofia Coppola film that made teen audiences worldwide swoon over his turn as the cooler-than-cool high school heartthrob Trip Fontaine. This pick makes a lot of sense because even though it was well-reviewed by critics at the time, it didn’t set the box office alight, instead cultivating a passionate cult audience over the subsequent decades.
However, the second film that Hartnett fans adore the most falls nicely into the same category as The Accountant and Constantine. You see, in a shock to the critics who lambasted it as a lame Pulp Fiction ripoff released a decade too late, 2006’s Lucky Number Slevin is the Hartnett sweet spot for a vast swathe of his fanbase.
That puckish neo-noir cast Hartnett as Slevin Kelevra, a young man caught up in a case of mistaken identity when he is kidnapped by mobsters who think he is his ne’er-do-well friend Nick Fisher. As the labyrinthine plot develops and Slevin comes into contact with cops and gangsters played by a powerhouse cast including Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley, Lucy Liu, and Stanley Tucci, it becomes apparent that all is not as it seems with the seemingly hapless Slevin. In other words, he’s a walking twist ending, fitting for a movie that seemed like it should have come out alongside The Usual Suspects in 1995.
The people who excitedly tell Hartnett how much Lucky Number Slevin means to them don’t seem to care that it was derided by critics and kicked to the curb of cinematic history, though. Instead, they love its pulpy twists and turns and will gladly tell its star all about it.
As for why these two pictures in particular are special to his fans, Hartnett has a theory. “People always want to talk about them,” he mused. “Maybe it’s because they’re more niche, and people feel like they’ve come to it themselves, as opposed to a bigger movie. But people love those characters.”
