Josh Hartnett walked away from Hollywood when he was one of the biggest stars in the world, and now he’s revealed the real reason why he did it.
In M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming psychological thriller, the Pearl Harbor actor plays Cooper, a serial killer known as The Butcher. Cooper takes his daughter to a concert and eventually realizes that the event is a police trap to catch him. To prepare for the role, Hartnett read “all the books” to get a feel for the mindset of a serial killer. “You have to know who you’re playing so you can get into the dark side of the mind of a serial killer. There are so many books about these people out there now and why they did what they did.”
Harnett was one of the biggest names in Hollywood in the late 1990s and early 2000s after his breakout role in Halloween: H20 Opposite Jamie Lee Curtis.
He went to the star in proverbs Pearl Harbor College And Black Hawk Down.
Josh Hartnett attends the premiere of “Trap” at Alice Tully Hall on July 24, 2024 in New York City. Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images.
Hartnett was then offered to play Superman, but turned down the coveted role twice, before also turning down the chance to play Batman, which then went to Christian Bale.
Then he did what would be unthinkable for most actors; he decided to step out of the limelight almost entirely.
He fired his agents, left Los Angeles, returned to his native Minnesota, and took a two-year hiatus from acting before pursuing a few smaller, more challenging projects.
“People’s interest in me at that time was pretty unhealthy,” Hartnett said of his decision to give up his status as a top-tier star overnight.
Asked to explain who had caught his attention, he added: “Well, look, I don’t want to make a big deal out of it. There have been incidents. People have come to my house. People have been chasing me.”
At the height of the interest, Hartnett was just 27 years old when a man showed up at one of his movie premieres brandishing a gun and claiming to be his father in an attempt to get close enough to the star.
The man later ended up going to prison because of this incident.
Actor Josh Hartnett and Australian actress Arielle Donoghue star in a new film titled Trap, which hits theaters August 8. Photo: Supplied.
“There were a lot of things. It was a weird time. I wasn’t going to be anything useful.”
“I didn’t want to waste my life on work. There was a belief at the time that you had to give it all up. I saw what happened to some people at the time. They were ruined by work. I didn’t want that for myself,” he added.
Hartnett has since returned to the spotlight, most notably starring in the upcoming thriller trapwhich hits cinemas next month in Australia and has been described as “The Silence of the Lambs at a Taylor Swift concert.”
Hartnett also has three other films in production, including The long houseDirected by James Franco.
