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Straight from the Hartnett By Stephen Rebello 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. 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. PAGE 1 | 2 |
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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." PAGE 1 | 2 |