Josh Hartnett Says ‘Heartthrob’ Status Hurt His Acting Career
Hartnett explained how his status as a teen "heartthrob" with a string of hits inevitably hurt his career after he became self-concious.
In a new Variety interview, Josh Hartnett explained why his status as a teen “heartthrob” actually hurt his career. Hartnett is promoting his role in M. Night Shyamalan’s new thriller Trap, which hits cinemas in August.
The actor broke onto the scene in 1998, playing Jamie Lee Curtis’ son Halloween H20. In the ultimate heartthrob coronation, he was bestowed an MTV Movie Award Nomination for Best Male Breakthrough Performance. Prime roles in some of the era’s classic genre movies—many aimed at teens—followed. He headlined eight major releases over the next four years, including The Faculty, Pearl Harbor, 40 Days and 40 Nights, and Black Hawk Down.
He continued appearing in more adult-skewing (and nominally well-received) genre films up until 2010, when he more or less fell off the mainstream map. Speaking to Variety, Hartnett revealed that his “heartthrob”status haunted him personally, and provided an unexpected hindrance to advancing his career.
He admitted it was “never my intention to be a heartthrob,” but rather a serious actor. He believes now that acknowledging his teen idol status was “the wrong approach.”
“I didn’t have the presence of mind to do that because I was so young,” Hartnett explained. “It had an effect on me, in which I had to fight against it. I really wanted to be a serious actor.”
Instead of enjoying the ride, though, Hartnett found himself hungry for opportunities that he was inherently not being considered for.
“What I didn’t understand is that I was in an amazing position, working with terrific directors on terrific projects,” he reflected. “For all intents and purposes, it didn’t matter how people viewed me in tabloids or whatever—as long as I was working within the industry. But I was too young to really understand that, to make the differentiation.”
Hartnett concluded: “To me, the world had seen me as a thing that I didn’t feel like inside. I wanted to rectify that.”
Finally, the industry seems to be recognizing Hartnett as a serious actor. In recent years, he’s mounted an enviable comeback with a key supporting role in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer; a terrifically villainous turn in a Black Mirror season six episode; and a pair of showy performances in two disparate Guy Ritchie movies. He’s now gearing up for the release of Trap, which marks his first lead performance in a major theatrical release since 2007’s 30 Days of Night.
Hartnett is sworn to secrecy about the unexpected turns of Shyamalan’s latest potboiler, but he raved to Variety that it’s exactly the sort of project he’d been craving. “The script was just bats--t crazy. The character is wonderful,” Hartnett enthused. “I can’t say anything about it, because [Shyamalan will] kill me. But the characters are all wonderfully complex.”
Trap hits theaters on August 9. You can check out the trailer below.