Hayden Christensen: Darth Victory

McGregor, known as one of the few actors in Hollywood who's extremely supportive of his costars and who doesn't play power games on sets, was especially helpful to his relatively green costar. "I really asked a lot of Ewan," says Christensen, "like how I should approach certain scenes and how to react to a nonactor like a droid. He and the stunt coordinator, Nick Gillard, were kind of my soul mates on the film. We were each others' saviors. We'd just go out, escape it all and enjoy ourselves. We played a good many games of pool together. I've stayed good friends with both of them and when I go to London, I stay with Ewan and we all hang out."

Of course, it's the hanging out he might have done with Natalie Portman that people are far more curious about. Actors who play lovers onscreen often hook up, and even if they don't, the tabloids say they do. In the case of Star Wars, gossip columnists never stopped speculating about an affair between Portman and Christensen. "It was really bizarre," he says. "I'm still getting asked in interviewers, 'So are you and Natalie an item?' You can't blame them for their curiosity. My whole philosophy is that if they ask questions about things that aren't true, I'm OK with it. If they start asking about things that are true then I'll start to worry."

Even if there was nothing between them in real life, are the scenes between them steamy? "Steamy?" he repeats, grinning. "I don't know if you can do that in a Star Wars movie and I think George is pretty aware of that. The [relationship] is depicted in a very classical way: at times, it's almost sort of melodramatic and over-the-top with how passionate these people are for each other. It's definitely not the way you'd see people meet and fall in love in a contemporary movie. It works with the whole rest of the film. This movie encompasses many different themes, but it's really a love story at the heart of it."

It is not, however, a sugar-coated love story. "It has a dark feel to it," says Christensen. "The story itself is darker and the love story is darker, almost to parallel the decline of the Republic. I think it was a conscious choice to make Episode I so colorful, but I think George is working away from that in this film."

To hear Lucas talk about it, Christensen turned out to be the right choice in this endeavor. "For Episode II, Hayden had to balance his character. He had to have a sense of humor and be warm enough for Padme to fall in love with him, yet have a dark side. It's a difficult thing to do. Hayden was able to pull it off very well."

Now that Christensen could well become a gigantic movie star, and perhaps a romantic idol, his own romantic history takes on a new dimension of interest. So, who was his first romantic crush? "I was 13 and I acted in a Movie of the Week [No Greater Love] with a woman, not a girl, named Kelly Rutherford," says Christensen. "She was the kindest, most beautiful woman I'd ever met then. I was completely smitten by her and kept staring at her with these blank starry eyes and a big smile. We're friends now. I didn't really date at all when I was in high school. I mean, forget about 'boyfriend and girlfriend.' When it even came to holding a girl's hand, I was extremely shy. When I was 16 and we lived in Toronto, there was this girl in Montreal who I had a long-distance romance with. She was kind of like my first girlfriend. On the weekend, I'd commute back and forth on the train to Montreal and that was really my first taste of being in love. It dissipated when I moved away from home. The point I'm making is that I've never really broken up with a girl or had a girl break up with me. There's never been such a defined relationship, so it wasn't necessary. My experience with girls has always been very genuine but, up until recently, I was always kind of overly self-aware, which made it hard to reach out to someone else and be comfortable with opening up."

Since he finds exposure so uncomfortable, how does he propose to survive the onslaught of publicity he is about to receive for years to come? "I think that's why I live at home still," he says, quietly. "I live with my parents in a small suburban town north of the city. It's an easy escape, a way I don't really have to feel the reality of others' opinions. It's such a struggle to protect your integrity and dignity in this industry. I haven't gotten the worst of it yet, but I can feel it. They really want to attack your morality and your beliefs. They need you to give up a certain part of yourself before they'll initiate you into 'stardom.' I had a very small life before this. I've always been kind of a hermit. I find my joy in the little things they want to take away from me. Prior to all this, I took pleasure from being the observer. Now I'm the observed."

Christensen has already become skeptical about people's motivation for befriending him. "I've had to realize just recently that someone I thought had nothing but good intentions was otherwise," he says. "Someone I thought was a friend was going around trying to capitalize on his relationship with me. It sucks. It's really hard to know how to deal with that. You find you accept a certain level of numbness. You desensitize yourself. Everyone has three good friends that you know are just solid but when it comes to people outside that circle, it's probably not going to work."

This sounds like the strategy of a guy who wasn't even inclined to be voted most popular in his class. "They say acting is the shy man's revenge, right?" he laughs. "I had a hard time talking to people. I started playing hockey when I was six and found myself surrounded with kids who were far more outgoing. I felt ostracized from the group I was trying to associate with. So I daydreamed."

Christensen's childhood fantasy of choice, he tells me, ran along the lines of the classic Curious George books. "Sometimes, I'd live vicariously through Curious George," he says, "I loved him, still do. I have all the books. I just bought the really fat compilation book of the first 10 volumes, which is a great book."

Curious George was apparently just a small part of a more elaborate world of whimsy. "I was convinced money literally grew on trees," he says. "My sister would wake up before me in the morning and Scotch tape pennies to the leaves of trees in the back yard. I'd wake up and pick the pennies off the trees."

Now that he's become a high-paid movie star, it is perhaps once again possible to believe that money grows on trees? "No," says Christensen. "I'm relatively modest when it comes to my budget. I don't rent some lavish penthouse apartment. I've had the same pearl white 1986 Jaguar XJC I've had since I was a kid, which I love even though it breaks down a lot. I got myself a big TV, surround sound and a DVD player, but that's about it."

Christensen has clearly not been cashing in on his Star Wars buzz to get the big Hollywood money jobs. The last acting job he took was the low-paying stage gig in the London production of Kenneth Lonergan's play This Is Our Youth, something Ewan McGregor urged him to do. In it, Christensen costarred with Jake Gyllenhaal and Anna Paquin as a wealthy criminal lout. After that he met with several household-name film directors about projects that will fill his time .and expand his horizons before he's drafted for Star Wars duty again. And then, there is the short list of movie projects Christensen and his brother Tove hope to launch together as part of their deal with New Line. "When I was 16, I adapted a book I love into a screenplay and right after I finished it, I said, 'I'm going to act in this, direct it and produce it.' In a year or two, one of the three or four things that my brother and I are passionate about could be happening."

With so much about to change in his life, Christensen prefers to keep his goals simple. "All I want is all what my mother wanted for me when she raised me--to be happy. For that, I don't need to be in a relationship. I don't need to have a certain level of respect. I just want to care very much about what I do and be kind to everyone in the process. It's important that I can feel that. That's happiness."

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Stephen Rebello interviewed Michelle Pfeiffer for the April issue of Movieline.

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