Josh Hartnett is opening up about walking away from Hollywood.
In an interview with The Guardian published Sunday, the Trap actor reflected on why he went from mega fame to keeping a low-key profile over the years. After he stopped working for 18 months at the time, Hartnett left Los Angeles, moved back home and changed the films he expressed interest in starring in.
Despite having a Hollywood trajectory that led to great success with films such as Pearl Harbor and Black Hawk Down and even notably turning down the role of Superman twice, Hartnett noted that there was no clear line between “happy Josh and unhappy Josh” and he explained, “People’s attention to me at the time was borderline unhealthy.”
“There were incidents. People showed up at my house. People that were stalking me,” he said.
When he was 27, he revealed, “a guy showed up at one of my premieres with a gun, claiming to be my father. He ended up in prison. There were lots of things. It was a weird time. And I wasn’t going to be grist for the mill.”
After declining heartthrob roles and moving away from major studio tentpoles, Hartnett pushed for smaller projects that were more challenging: “I just didn’t want my life to be swallowed up by my work,” he explained. “And there was a notion at that time you just kind of give it all up. And you saw what happened to some people back then. They got obliterated by it. I didn’t want that for myself.”
Hartnett explained that he spent time only taking parts that were of interest to him and maybe didn’t always become high-profile, including films like Mozart and the Whale (2005), Resurrecting the Champ (2007) and The Black Dahlia (2006). “Some of those films were successful. Some of them were failures. But I was always swinging for something that was outside what people expected from me,” he said.
He also once had a meeting with Christopher Nolan about playing Batman, but pitched himself instead for a role in Nolan’s thriller The Prestige. The roles eventually went to Christian Bale.
“I recognized the missed opportunity to work with a guy like Chris,” Hartnett said. “And 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 any more. It’s about finding people who you really trust.”
Amid starring in M Night Shyamalan’s Trap, Hartnett has recently experienced what the Guardian described as a “Joshonaissance” having starred in Guy Ritchie’s Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, an episode of Black Mirror and got a second chance to work with Nolan on his Oscar-winner Oppenheimer.
Now 46, Hartnett said it seems “the rest of the industry” is “sort of catching up with what I was always hoping to do.” But also noted, “Maybe it’s also because of my age. I could name a million examples of actors who have become more interesting as they get older. You can’t be an ingenue forever, right?”