Josh Hartnett says the Hollywood “hiatus” that has followed him in headlines lasted much longer in the public imagination than it did in his working life.
“I was on hiatus from people’s minds, I guess,” the 48-year-old actor said on the October 1st episode of Scene Stealers, hosted by John Feitelberg.
The conversation comes as Hartnett returns to theaters in Verity, playing Jeremy Crawford opposite Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson. The Colleen Hoover adaptation, directed by Michael Showalter, opened on October 2nd.
Hartnett sees an advantage in having spent years outside that level of public attention. He said it “gives me the ability to come back and be fresh again.”
Hartnett Took About a Year Off to Write a Screenplay
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Hartnett said he was 22 when he finished Black Hawk Down, part of a rush of releases that also included Pearl Harbor and Town & Country in 2001. He remembered being “everywhere” before he had figured out who he was or what he wanted from his career. He decided to take about a year away and wrote a screenplay during the break.
When he considered what to do next, Hartnett kept returning to the experience of making Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides. He had loved working on that film and wanted to find projects that excited him in the same way.
Smaller Movies Frustrated People Who Expected Blockbusters
Hartnett said some people around him were financially invested in his continuing to make major studio films. Their income depended partly on his, and they grew frustrated when he chose projects that paid little or nothing. He described pushing himself “out of the business side of the business” for a while.
His subsequent work included Mozart and the Whale, The Black Dahlia and Resurrecting the Champ, followed by a substantial television role in Penny Dreadful.
In a separate October 1st interview with The Film Stage, Hartnett described how much input he had on Lucky Number Slevin. His friend Jason Smilovic wrote the script, friends produced the film, and Hartnett helped work on the material before shooting.
Once the cast came together, the financing followed, Hartnett recalled. With friends making the film and room to contribute beyond his performance, he compared the experience to “my first real producing gig.”
He also turned down an offer to play Superman. Hartnett clarified in a 2020 Variety interview that Batman involved a conversation with Christopher Nolan, without an audition or an offer.
‘Oppenheimer’ and a New Run of Film and TV Roles
Hartnett’s 2023 releases included Guy Ritchie’s Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, the Black Mirror episode “Beyond the Sea” and Nolan’s Oppenheimer. The roles took him from a Hollywood actor to an astronaut and then to nuclear physicist Ernest Lawrence.
Hartnett also told The Film Stage that he shot Verity and Below consecutively, playing very different characters. In the latter, he stars as Calvin Penney, a Newfoundland fisherman trying to protect his family and community from a mysterious sea creature.
Hartnett is also an executive producer of the limited series, which co-stars Mackenzie Davis and Charlie Heaton. All six episodes of Below arrive on Netflix on October 8th.