Josh Hartnett is in the midst of a renaissance in the minds of many, with Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-hoovering biopic Oppenheimer, The Bear season 3, Black Mirror season 6, Guy Ritchie’s Wrath of Man and M Night Shyamalan’s latest mystery box event Trap all coming out in the last 14 months, but why did the Hollywood ‘heartthrob’ of the early noughties ditch the spotlight in the first place?
The Minnesotan seemed to be cruising between 1999 and 2006, ticking off collaborations with highly-regarded filmmakers like Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides), Ridley Scott (Black Hawk Down), Michael Bay (Pearl Harbour), Robert Rodriguez (Sin City) and Brian De Palma (The Black Dahlia) before slowing down in a major way. It then took Hartnett another eight years to commit to something worthy of his star quality – the stylish Victorian horror show Penny Dreadful – having unconventionally rejected offers to don the red Superman cape and Batman’s cowl.
In the time since, various moods of reflection have given the actor’s fanbase a reasoning behind his downing of tools and what it appears to be is a case of burned bridges thanks to a preference for the quiet life.
A mistrust born from his celebrity status
During a 2014 conversation with the now-defunct DETAILS magazine, Hartnett explained that his constant front page coverage caused a little too much heat for him on the street.
“I couldn’t really go anywhere. I didn’t feel comfortable in my own skin. I was alone. I didn’t trust anyone. I’m still finding my way through all that,” he said.
Seven years later, the 30 Days of Night star admitted to news.com.au that it was a formative time for him personally and to take the bull by the horns would’ve proved “too much”.
“I was happy to be going to work and making films, and coming home and hanging out with people who I knew cared about me, instead of, you know… hobnobbing,” added Hartnett. “If I were to have sort of stuck in that Hollywood game, I think I would have been played out pretty quickly. I think people would have gotten pretty sick of me.”
Going against the grain
Apparently, before Christian Bale signed on the dotted line and made a trilogy of game-changing Batman blockbusters, Hartnett turned down director Nolan’s approach to join him in Gotham.
He told The Guardian in 2015: “I was tired and wanted to spend more time with my friends and family. That’s frowned upon in this industry. I learned my lesson when Christopher Nolan and I talked about Batman. I decided it wasn’t for me. Then he didn’t want to put me in The Prestige. They not only hired their Batman for it, they also hired my girlfriend [Scarlett Johansson] at the time.”
Based on author Christopher Priest’s magical rivalry novel, The Prestige is something of an unsung hero in the Nolan catalogue and one that wouldn’t have plastered Hartnett’s face all over billboards back then. It had a modest budget of $40 million compared to the $150m war chest of Batman Begins.
Speaking to the same publication four years ago, the actor claimed that the studios viewed him as somebody who’d “bitten the hand that fed me” by sidestepping tentpole projects.
“It wasn’t that. I wasn’t doing it to be recalcitrant or a rebel. People wanted to create a brand around me that was going to be accessible and well-liked, but I didn’t respond to the idea of playing the same character over and over, so I branched out,” Hartnett shared. “I tried to find smaller films I could be part of and, in the process, I burned my bridges at the studios because I wasn’t participating. Our goals weren’t the same.”
Fortunately for him, Nolan let bygones be bygones by inviting him to play real-life nuclear physicist Ernest Lawrence in Oppenheimer.
Raising a family in the English countryside
Meanwhile, the raising of four kids with his wife Tamsin Egerton in southern England has also played a huge part in Hartnett’s tricky relationship with Tinsel Town.
“I didn’t really take any major hiatuses that were planned, I just had kids,” he told Yahoo Entertainment in 2021. “I started doing smaller films [since] the films didn’t take me away from the kids very often”.
While promoting Trap this month, Hartnett also revealed to PEOPLE that he and fellow actor Egerton don’t like to bring work home with them. “Dad has to go to work, and they do know what I do, but they don’t understand the thing yet. And I’m glad that they don’t. We’ll try and keep them away from it as much as possible because we want them to have normal upbringings.”
Trap is released in cinemas on Friday, 9 August.
