(Los Angeles) Josh Hartnett, the handsome guy seen in Pearl Harbor And Virgin Suicides more than twenty years before his exile from Hollywood, is an actor in full renaissance who cultivates his image as a jack-of-all-trades.
Since last year, the 46-year-old actor has had a key role in Oppenheimer – portrait of the father of the atomic bomb that dominated the last Oscars – and made some notable appearances in the series The Bear And Black Mirror.
A breakthrough that he completes with Trapthe new thriller film by M. Night Shyamalan, which opens Friday in the United States and next week in France.
Quite a symbol for Josh Hartnett, who is delighted that Hollywood is offering him “unique” roles that he has long desired.
“These directors now find me interesting,” he told AFP via videoconference, specifying that his disappearance was never voluntary. “Whereas a few years ago, I was perhaps […] too young to be interesting.”
In TrapJosh Hartnett plays Cooper, a father who takes his teenage daughter to a Taylor Swift-style pop star concert. But behind this affectionate father figure is a serial killer wanted by the police, who staged the event specifically to catch him.
PHOTO SABRINA LANTOS, ASSOCIATED PRESS
In TrapJosh Hartnett plays Cooper, a father who takes his teenage daughter to a Taylor Swift-style pop star concert.
“The concept of this movie, which is so cool, is that we tell you right from the start that he’s the bad guy,” the actor explains. “And yet we need […] that you support him so that he gets out of this situation.”
Former “poster boy”
The role fits perfectly with the actor’s aspirations.
“I like high-wire acts and I also like the possibility of failing miserably, that excites me,” he continues.
After rising to fame, then refusing to play Superman and abruptly leaving Los Angeles in the 2000s, Josh Hartnett is making a return to his roots with this thriller. His first feature film was the horror film Halloween, 20 years laterstarring Jamie Lee Curtis.
With his poster boy looks, the actor quickly earned a reputation as a handsome heartthrob who was used to playing dark schemers, as in Virgin Suicides by Sofia Coppola or The Black Dahlia by Brian de Palma.
His rise propelled him to the top of Hollywood, which led him to appear in two major war films in 2001: Pearl Harbora fresco about the decisive attack of the Second World War with Ben Affleck, and The fall of the Black Falconan account of a bloody battle by the American army in Somalia in the 1990s.
But his sudden departure from Hollywood, first for his native Minnesota and then for England – where he still lives – changed everything.
The actor never stopped acting, but the offers for major roles dried up. The American press began to publish articles asking: “What happened to Josh Hartnett?”
” Go off the beaten track ”
While other hunks like Leonardo DiCaprio – to whom he was compared – were becoming superstars, Josh Hartnett was starring in many debut films by young non-American directors, far from the Hollywood spotlight.
A work noticed by Christopher Nolan, who invited him on Oppenheimer to play Ernest Lawrence, a scientist who falls out with the inventor of the atomic bomb over his communist sympathies and marital infidelities.
Back in the spotlight, Josh Hartnett still savors having been able to collaborate with “a director who, in my opinion, is one of the best at the moment.”
To embody the murderous father of Trapthe actor read books to understand how some psychopaths can be “absolutely charming” and gifted at “hiding in broad daylight.” Research that is as fascinating as it is disturbing, he confides.
“I’ve always tried to do things that were outside the box,” he continues. “And now I’m not pigeonholed and I’m allowed to play these diverse characters.” […] It’s great, I feel really lucky.”