The “teen heartthrob” label can be difficult for actors to shake off, but Josh Hartnett has managed to do it in recent years after several intriguing role choices, including the critically acclaimed film Oppenheimer. Speaking with Variety, Hartnett went into detail about how his career has changed since his younger years.
Hartnett notes that his priorities in acting have shifted since his younger years. He explains, “I used to be really interested in the effect of the character and what the character meant to me, personally. I wanted to find a specific type of character, when I had choices when I was younger. And then as I got older, I realized, actually, I want to choose things that are way outside of what I understand. I also don’t really care about what the character is as much as I care about the people that I’m working with. If it’s great people, then it’s my job to figure out what the character is.”
As an example of his new challenges, Hartnett appears in Season 6 of Netflix’s Black Mirror as an astronaut who has the ability to transfer his mind into a replica body on Earth only to have to watch as his wife and family are murdered. Hartnett admits, “We did that for two nights, and it was really horrible. It was horrible to imagine because that’s the only way I can do it. I’m not much of an actor. I have to really put myself in a situation. That’s the job. Sometimes you have to go to places you don’t want to go to.”
Unfortunately, Hartnett confesses that he finds it hard to shake off such heavy material after filming ends. He says, “I’m not great at getting out of it, especially if it’s hard to get into. It takes about the same amount of kind of effort to come out because I can’t just pick it up and put it down.”
Ultimately, Hartnett points out that these recent challenges have helped him rediscover his passion for acting. He says:
“I love my work and I want to put it out there and I want people to enjoy it. But like me, personally, I don’t feel the way that I did when I was younger, because I was undefined. I was 19, 20, 21 years old. So, I was still trying to figure out who I was. Something of that magnitude that everybody knew about and sort of thought of me as the character, had an effect on me that I kicked back against. It was always something that I had to contend with at that age, and I was still trying to figure out what I meant to myself and to people around me. I don’t think that could happen again at the age of 45 — I hope I’ve got a little bit more there there.”
