Josh Hartnett: Straight From The Hartnett

Little known a year ago, Josh Hartnett is front and center with Ben Affleck and Kate Beckinsale in this summer's biggest film, Pearl Harbor, and he has another major one coming up soon, Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down. How did a lanky Minnesota boy rise to stardom so quickly? As he tells it, the formula for success is one part pure wanderlust to three parts sheer rebelliousness.

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When Josh Hartnett came to Los Angeles four years ago in hopes of finding acting jobs, he wasn't aware that most actors spend their first few years struggling before they land so much as a TV commercial. In his hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota, he had won lead roles in high school plays and a TV commercial for Mervyn's, so he just presumed luck would follow him west. Incredibly, it did. Within weeks he was cast as a rebellious teenager in the TV series "Cracker." The show failed, but Hartnett then simply moved to the big screen. When he played Jamie Lee Curtis's brooding son in the slasher hit Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, he gained an immense teen following that only broadened when he starred as a popular drug-dealing high school student in another teen flick, The Faculty, O, a modern retelling of Shakespeare's Othello, and the all-star Town & Country ran into unusual difficulties that delayed their releases for extended periods, while the teen weepie Here on Earth turned out to be a waste of time. But then he came out in Sofia Coppola's indie The Virgin Suicides. In that film, Hartnett's irresistible '70s seducer radiated such manliness, mystery and cool that casting agents and moviemakers knew instantly they were looking at a live one. Hartnett went to the top of the list of actors vying for starring roles in director Michael Bay's $135 million World War II epic Pearl Harbor. Bay chose Hartnett and paired him with Ben Affleck and Kate Beckinsale as the nurse they both fall for. Then, before Pearl Harbor's stunning trailer swept across screens, he was snapped up to star in two more high-profile films--the highly touted romantic comedy 40 Days and 40 Nights and Ridley Scott's big-budget drama of U.S. soldiers in Somalia, Black Hawk Down.

Career ascensions as swift as Hartnett's usually breed cockiness, but Hartnett betrays none of that. When I catch up with the 22-year-old at the Chateau Marmont in L.A., he comes off as impressively gentleman-like and disarmingly serious. Dressed stylishly and simply in slacks and a T-shirt, he's a tall (6'3"), good-looking all-American guy, without a whiff of Hollywood about him. He seems to register my surprise at his ability to sit pensively still to the point of suspended animation. "I'm from Minnesota," he says in a whisper so soft I have to lean in to hear him, "so I'm conservative."

STEPHEN REBELLO: Are you still adjusting to the level of attention Pearl Harbor has brought you?

JOSH HARTNETT: It's not something that's easy to get used to. I find it odd how much attention has been paid to my personal life. I hardly ever read what's written about me, so I'm the last one to know what's being said, but if I even so much as say hello to an actress I barely know, later I'll hear that it was printed in a paper that we're an item. I like to be involved in the business, but I also like to keep kind of outside of it, know what I mean?

Q: Do you think Pearl Harbor will propel you toward Leonardo DiCaprio's level of fame? A: The size of Pearl Harbor was one of the scariest things about it. I didn't know if I wanted to do it because the scope was so frightening. I was afraid of the repercussions of fame. I was afraid that everyone would start wanting to know my business, want to sap something out of me, invade my personal life to the point where I have to guard myself against people. That's not my nature. I'm an explorer. But you can't turn down a film because you're worried that the success of it will land you on the cover of every tabloid.

Q: Do you have a strategy for handling fame?

A: I'll deal with fame if and when it comes. If it does, I'll probably screw it all up, you know? 

Q: What finally convinced you to take Pearl Harbor?

A: A conversation I had with my dad. I told him that the film would change my life and maybe my whole family's, too, and that I didn't know if it was the right thing to do. He said, "It's your decision. But fame is temporary. You can quit and it'll go away or you can keep going and it'll go away anyway. But regret can be permanent." One of the last things I said to my dad before I got on the plane to go off and shoot Pearl Harbor was, "I'm going to go for the ride until it lets me off."

Q: Sounds like you're very close to your father.

A: Oh, man, he's a great guy. He owns and manages buildings in the Twin Cities, and he's made a life where he rarely has to work too much and he just hangs out with my brothers and sisters. We have a great father.

Q: Let's talk Pearl Harbor. How did you decide to play your character?

A: As early as the screen test I asked the director, Michael Bay, and the producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, if they wanted the character to be more standoffish, a real guy's guy, like the way actors played pilots in '40s films, or if they wanted him to be more in touch with his emotions. They said they didn't want the performance to be overstylized, because they were making the film for a new millennial audience. The characters might have come across a bit stiffer if we'd played them in the '40s style. I probably could have done it if I was a better actor and delved into the times. But, really, the script is too straightforward to find those moments. It's an honest portrayal of an innocent guy who's had a tough life. He's dealing with a lot of pain and sadness. In a way, he's the same kind of guy I always play.

Q: You mean bruised, sad, troubled?

A: [Laughs] You've got it. It's not that I look for that, but my characters always have dark backgrounds.

Q: What was the greatest challenge of making Pearl Harbor?

A: Trying to find out where I fit in this gigantic thing. The confidence you have to have to feel like you belong on the screen with all this amazing stuff happening--it's pretty intense. Ben Affleck has that confidence. I tried to reach it while we were shooting.

Q: Did you learn anything about fame from Affleck?

A: I don't know if I could learn anything from Ben or anyone else until it happens, but I think Ben's holding together very well. I've seen other people who aren't. I do know that when you're not famous, you're trying to find exciting things to happen in your life, and when you're famous there's always something coming at you. There's never a dull moment. So I figure when you're very famous you look for dull moments.

Q: Michael Bay is famous for being hard on his actors. How was he with you?

A: I got to know him before we started filming so I knew he wasn't as big a bastard as people think he is. He's really passionate and feels he hasn't figured out a different way to get things done quickly other than getting really hard on people. The stuff that he pulled off while we were shooting was amazing, so I felt lucky to be around that kind of visual genius.

Q: Bay has spoken about how difficult the filmmaking process was on Pearl Harbor. Did you feel that?

A: Doing it was so chopped up. Different pieces of one cockpit drama between me and Ben were dispersed over several months. We shot inside a plane in Hawaii taxiing down a runway with us looking out the window, then months later we shot on a big mechanical monster, a gimbal, from the outside. Then we shot a little bit on the tarmac on the Disney lot. All of this was for one scene. The challenge was to make it seem continuous.

Q: Your Pearl Harbor costar Kate Beckinsale is just one of the talented, beautiful women you've worked with. Some of the others are Kirsten Dunst in The Virgin Suicides, Leelee Sobieski in Here on Earth and Julia Stiles in O. Who stands out? A: Leelee's such a sweet, sweet girl, a really smart person with a great head on her shoulders, sometimes too much so. She's way beyond her years. We got to be pretty good friends. She and Kirsten Dunst have both grown up to become such fully intelligent and interesting people. It's just great to see that the business hasn't knocked the legs out from under either of them, which it definitely can.

Q: Which costars do you think you've had chemistry with?

A: Leelee and Julia Stiles.

Q: Are the rumors that you dated Stiles true?

A: No, that's ridiculous. When I see her out I say, "Hey, Julia, do you know we're hot and heavy?"

Q: Would you say you have chemistry with Shannyn Sossamon, with whom you costar in 40 Days and 40 Nights?

A: It was a good working relationship. We had a good time together. [Long silence]

Q: Can you remember a moment in the film that suggests the chemistry between you? A: Are you looking for dirt?

Q: I'm trying to get an idea of how you two sparked.

A: Yeah, right. [Laughs] She's got a boyfriend and I kind of have a girlfriend. We're just friends.

Q: Because you've worked with so many attractive actresses, do you feel you have a pretty good grip on how they tick?

A: Women are a mystery. I've never been able to figure one out. But it's a lot more fun to go to work with a beautiful, intelligent, exciting woman than it is to go to work with a bunch of middle-aged men. No offense to the middle-aged men of the world.

Q: Have you ever had a relationship with one of your costars?

A: I screwed up on my girlfriend with somebody on a movie set and we broke up. A while later, after we became friends again, she said to me, "I know why, I understand completely what it's all about, how hard it is to stay involved with someone far away when you're making a movie." She taught me the word "communitas," which means a community that comes together to make a piece of art, then disperses. You go through the entire stage of a community, only it's compressed within three months. And there's a prince and princess that pair off. The crew rarely does that, maybe because crews are usually from the location where filming takes place. Actors are imported and don't know anybody except each other. You're young. You're ready, willing and able and [Laughs] you're just there. What can I say?

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