Once upon a time in Hollywood, Josh Hartnett was inescapable.
In 1999,Teen Peoplenamed him one of its 21 Hottest Stars Under 21.
In 2003,PETAnamed him one of its Sexiest Vegetarian Celebrities.
You get the idea.
Even Hartnett agrees that it was too much.
A Vanity Fair cover story, in particular, seemed to go too far.
“[W]as it just everyone talking about how hot I was?”
he pondered toThe Guardianyears later.
“People got a chip on their shoulder about me after that.
They genuinely thought I’d been thrust on them.
It was a very weird time.”
Hartnett isn’t quite that famous anymore.
He regularly appears in articles that wonder why, or where he’s been.
The answer is simple: He’s been acting!
In 2023, he toldYahoothat he doesn’t understand why people keep writing about him this way.
“I find it remarkable and very lucky that I’m here after 25 years.
It’s bizarre.”
As he toldThe Guardian, “It’s one of those ideal places to raise a family.
It’s safe, it’s beautiful, there are lakes and cabins.”
Hartnett was raised Catholic, and he was an altar boy.
However, his motives weren’t necessarily always pure.
“I’ve always felt that I could do whatever the hell I wanted,” he toldUSA Today.
“Maybe that’s the product of growing up when I did and where I did.
My parents weren’t wealthy, but I was told to follow my heart.”
Unfortunately, he suffered a knee injury and was no longer able to play.
He toldThe Guardianthat he looked into acting instead, even though he thought it was “for sissies.”
He tried out for a part in a play about Tom Sawyer and won the role of Huck Finn.
Soon, the young actor was hooked.
Around the same time, Hartnett had a job working at a video store.
He toldVanity Fairthat the position gave him an education in film.
You see so many."
He toldTeen Peoplethat a neighbor who didn’t know it was all part of the film called the cops.
Luckily, they were taking a break when the police arrived.
By the time he graduated high school, Hartnett was acting in commercials.
His manager, Nancy Kremer, insisted that he go to Hollywood.
He went to college first, attending SUNY Purchase.
Then he left school to make his way in Los Angeles.
It was really strange," he ruminated.
I thought it was all going to be a community," he toldVanity Fair.
Not so much, but that’s okay; Hartnett’s manager got him an agent right away.
Soon, he was going out on four auditions a day.
Kremer told Vanity Fair that her young protege built buzz around town almost immediately.
“That’s just a gift from the heavens.”
While those early roles showed an actor with promise, they also showed something else: a terrible haircut.
His hair was the same in “The Faculty,” as a thread onMovieChatexplored.
“[I]t’s Josh Harnett,” one fan wrote.
“He can get away with it and still look hot.”
He finally explained himself in a 2001 interview, confessing that there was no barber to blame.
That’s right: He cut it himself.
Hartnett toldHollywood.comthat he had the haircut in his auditions, so he kept it for the films.
Luckily, he had the film’s director to back him up.
“It felt like nothing I’d done before,” he said.
“It just felt so relaxed.”
Hartnett turned 20 on set, and when he did, Coppola gave him a bottle of wine.
According toArtful Living, the director wrote on the label, “Congratulations, Josh.
Teen idol no more.”
Josh Hartnett, serious actor, had arrived.
Gone were the movies about teenagers, for one; this was a grown-up role.
Co-star Ben Affleck anticipated similarly massive things.
“He is particularly at risk for this as he is so very PRETTY.”
At this point in his career, though, Hartnett wasn’t sure he wanted this.
His father told him that regret can last forever, but fame can be temporary.
So he signed on.
The film was not nearly as big as “Titanic,” but Hartnett’s life had indeed changed.
He toldThe Guardianthat he wasn’t interested in being that famous forever.
“People care about my fame, not me,” he pondered.
“But that’s fine.
I have my own life.”
He tested me to the limit, so I hated him for a while."
Hartnett said that Ford teased him about various acting choices he made on set, leading to tension.
Ford, for his part, did little to hide his opinion of his younger co-star.
A scripted bit, no doubt … but still.
Two decades later, Hartnett said things were blown out of proportion.
He did, however, confess to having injured his co-star during a stunt driving sequence gone wrong.
“We have film footage of Harrison’s head hitting the windscreen,” he admitted.
“He was fine …
I was very close to killing one of my idols.”
Hartnett felt that tension, too.
“It’s hard to overcome that pretty boy thing,” he told the magazine.
“I don’t know.
I always wanted to be considered an actor.”
“I think trying to stay at the top is a shortcut to unhappiness,” he said.
“I took 15 months out of the business.
I was like a lot of people in their 20s, wondering, ‘Who am I?
What do I want to be when I grow up?'”
Ultimately, while he considered going back to school to be a painter, Hartnett decided to continue acting.
That time away, however, took some of the pressure off of his boiling-hot fame.
Finally, Josh Hartnett was learning how to just be.
He told GQ that he trained at a Minneapolis boxing gym called Circle of Discipline.
His discipline extended to his diet, maintaining a weight of precisely 175 pounds.
By the time he was ready to film, Hartnett thought about some actual fights.
“I would have lost,” he confessed.
He read the source novel by James Ellroy and realized that Bucky’s boxing strategy resembles his police work.
“When I got into the ring I felt that I was really starting to understand the character.”
But the boxing wasn’t the only way Hartnett got into character.
He smoked real cigarettes on set, too, which took a toll on his body.
“you’ve got the option to see it in the movie,” Hartnett confessed toDark Horizons.
“I look sallow.”
“Josh and the girl were getting pretty hot and heavy,” a source told The Mirror.
“Unfortunately, the hotel has security cameras all over the place.”
Mere days after the story broke,TMZreported that it simply didn’t happen.
The lawsuit didn’t take long to work its way through the courts.
By December,The Guardianreported that The Mirror had admitted the whole thing was made up.
They agreed to pay him 20,000 in damages about $30,000 at the time which he donated to charity.
They also apologized for causing him “distress, hurt, and embarrassment.”
The show was a hit and ran for three seasons.
“That’s the great thing about working on TV, which I’d never really anticipated.
It’s kind of organic in that way.
If something is working, then you’re able to take advantage of it.”
Hartnett also confessed that he had a totally new outlook on life thanks to having a child.
Furthermore, Hartnett said, his daughter made him realize that he’d been missing out.
“I wish I would’ve started earlier,” he said.
While speaking with"Good Morning Britain,“Hartnett had more to say about his new perspective.
“You’re actually living your life for the first time because everything matters a bit more.”
The two starred together in “The Lovers,” and they’ve been together ever since.
“That’s why I see to it my life is my own.”
We don’t know the details of their nuptials no Vogue photo shoots here!
butPeopleconfirmed in 2022 that Hartnett had married Egerton the previous November.
Hartnett seems to havesettled happily into married life.
“I met [Nolan].
I talked to him about it.
It wasn’t something that was interesting to me at the time,” Hartnett told The Independent.
“I was on a different path to a lot of actors.”
“I’m a big believer in things working out when they’re supposed to.”
“He was incredible.”
