Josh Hartnett has always wanted to do the unexpected. What else could we expect from a broad-chested, six-foot-three football player turned actor with a strong jaw and deep brown eyes? Prom king. Daring pilot. Brave soldier. Which he has played. (See: Virgin Suicide. Pearl Harbor. Black Hawk DownBut since appearing in some of these roles in the early 2000s, he has done his best to undermine the teen idol persona, pursuing unconventional characters who exist, in his words, “outside the heroic archetypes.” He has even abandoned Hollywood altogether.
Nearly 20 years ago, Hartnett left Los Angeles for his native Minnesota. When the distance wasn’t far enough, he moved to England, where he now lives in rural Hampshire with his wife, model and actress Tamsin Egerton, and their four children.
But after years of disappearing, appearing in a few smaller, lesser-known projects, Hartnett, who just turned 46, is beginning to make a comeback. You may have heard about it. First, she appeared in the sci-fi anthology black mirror Christopher Nolan's Oscar-winning film Oppenheimer Last year. Then in June, he appeared in the highly anticipated third season of The bearAs Frank, Richie's ex-wife's fiancé, the perfect serious-minded future stepfather. Now he's getting his first starring role in a long time, in director M. Night Shyamalan's latest thriller, trap (in theaters)
“I was never somebody who had a career in mind or wanted to be the biggest movie star in the world,” Hartnett says, sitting at the Crosby Street Hotel in Manhattan. “I never was. So it wasn’t that I walked away, it was just that people had an idea of what I could be. And I never felt that way.”
with trapHartnett has landed one of his most bizarre roles yet. He plays Cooper, a loving father who takes his young daughter to see her favorite pop star. But Cooper soon realizes that the concert is just a trap to expose his double life as a serial killer known as The Butcher.
“It’s a coming-of-age story of a serial killer,” says Hartnett, who has a softer, less flamboyant presence than Cooper on screen. In fact, Cooper looks the same as he has for nearly three decades. “This is a character who thinks of himself in a certain way and pretends to be that way. And underneath that way, he’s always thought of himself as this abomination, this monster. This is the day he discovers that maybe there’s a part of himself that he’s not.”
As a longtime fan of Shyamalan's work, Hartnett was interested in Shyamalan's work. trap From the moment he read the script, it reminded him of the indie thrillers of the 1990s, whose directors were moving. “It’s like looking at die hard “Through the eyes of Hans Gruber,” he says, smiling his trademark crooked smile. “It’s high-end entertainment, for a mass audience, but it’s completely new. We don’t need the intellectual property or a previous film to create a sequel to it to entertain the audience. That doesn’t happen very often anymore.”
As nuclear physicist Ernest Lawrence in the movie “Oppenheimer”
Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
With Ebon Moss-Bachrach in the movie “The Bear”
FX
While one of Shyamalan’s early references to Cooper was Ted Bundy, Hartnett focused more on the psychology behind psychopaths rather than any specific historical figure. He also wanted to focus on the “female father” aspects of the character, invoking a parenting blog-inspired enthusiasm for whatever his daughter liked. In the moments before Cooper’s shell cracks, he’s a dad who does all the right things: lets his daughter play music in the car, buys her merchandise, and advises her on how to deal with bullies at school. This makes the duality of his violent tendencies all the more disturbing, both to the audience and to Cooper himself.
He is learning more about [his daughter] “And how he feels about her,” Hartnett explains.
just us trap At the start of filming, news broke of a real-life serial killer suspect: a man had been arrested and charged in the alleged Gilgo Beach murders on Long Island, a series of killings that took place over decades, while the accused lived a normal life nearby as an architect, husband, and father. For Hartnett, the case underscores one of the larger ideas behind trap“It could be anyone. That's the point. It doesn't have to be Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy. It could be your neighbor right now.”
Despite the dark subject matter, there was plenty of fun on set. Hartnett was able to briefly reunite with an old friend, Kid Cudi. The rapper and actor appears in a brief scene in trap In 2009, Hartnett and Cody met at a Ratatat concert when Cody was just starting out. They instantly connected, and Hartnett even directed the video for Cody's single “Pursuit of Happiness” after the rapper wanted to scrap the original video idea.
“He didn’t have any money to make the movie because they had already spent money on the first idea,” Hartnett explained, “so we raised about five thousand dollars and shot on location in the West Village.” Hartnett and I hadn’t seen each other much since moving to the UK, so the two-day shoot was a belated reunion.
while trap This film seems to mark the culmination of what people have called Josh Hartnett’s “renaissance,” but the actor has no intention of using this moment to become famous and don a superhero costume. He’s still hungry for the unconventional roles he took when he was starting out—and working with directors he’s always admired, like Nolan and Shyamalan, opens the door again.
“It’s a lot easier to do things within this business when you’re a little older, because you don’t have to worry about people defining you to the public in a way that you’re not comfortable with, because your frontal lobe is fully developed,” he says. “That wasn’t the case when I was 20.”
“I started my career with the college And Virgin Suicide, “These characters were weird, and I thought I could keep playing weird characters or characters outside the heroic archetypes,” he adds. “And after certain movies came out, the studios or whoever was in charge of me wanted me to stay on that path. But I kept doing my own thing, and it was hard. It became hard to get audiences to come see it because you need good partners and good collaborators who can push it to the audience. You need to sell the movie.”
Now Hartnett, who worked in a video store before he got into acting, has a list of directors he’d like to work with someday. The Cohen brothers are at the top of the list, though Joel and Ethan have been working on solo projects for the past few years. Martin Scorsese also comes to mind, though he doubts that moment will come.
As for what’s next, Hartnett hopes to take another “left turn” and continue to surprise people. “It’s all about the directors, so if a good director makes a musical, I’m up for it,” he says. He’s also open to returning to The bear“I don’t know what magic goes on there, but it’s like a club, even the actors who aren’t showing that day are there, it’s just fun for them.”
Perhaps his most surprising turn was to star in a film his children could watch—no sex, no serial killers, no battlefield blood. “I’ve never made a film for a young audience, and my kids don’t really understand what I’m doing,” he admits. “Let’s show this to the world.”
