Photo by Sarah Dunn
Back-to-back roles in “Halloween H20: 20 Years Later,” “The Faculty,” “Black Hawk Down,” “The Virgin Suicides,” “Pearl Harbor,” and “40 Days and 40 Nights”—all released between 1998 and 2002—made Twin Cities native Josh Hartnett a Hollywood darling. But Hartnett, who was just 20 when “Halloween H20” hit cinemas, tells Minnesota Monthly he found the attention “disconcerting.”
“I didn’t think it was necessarily merited,” he says. “I don’t think the amount of attention any actor or celebrity gets is really merited.”
Hartnett only started acting after tearing his ACL playing football at 16. “When I couldn’t do that anymore, I needed another outlet.” Encouraged by a cousin, he auditioned for a local youth theater company, landed the lead, and continued acting through high school. Within a few years, he was a Hollywood leading man.
But Hartnett remained particular about his roles. “People saw me in one particular light. They wanted me to play simplified heroic characters,” he says. “I wanted to expand people’s perceptions of what I could do.”
A quarter-century later, Hartnett has found that creative sweet spot. Now living on a small farm in Hampshire, England, with his wife, actress Tamsin Egerton, and their four children, he has embraced an increasingly varied slate of projects, from “Black Mirror” and “The Bear” to “Trap” and “Oppenheimer.”
“I don’t need to define myself based off of my work anymore,” he says. “I want to make fun, entertaining, cool, and interesting work. … I want to keep people guessing.”
That continues Oct. 2 with “Verity,” the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s novel starring Dakota Johnson and Anne Hathaway. Hartnett plays Jeremy, husband of incapacitated author Verity Crawford. He describes the psychological thriller as “gothic, intense, filled with mystery, romantic, and sexy.”
Photo by Alisha Wetherill/Amazon MGM Studios
A week later, Hartnett will lead Netflix’s mystery thriller miniseries “Below,” filmed over five months in Newfoundland. “The story was just so rich and fascinating,” he says. “I just fell in love with the place.”
Despite living across the Atlantic, Hartnett still credits Minnesota with keeping him grounded, particularly when fame became overwhelming. “I grew up in a really wonderful and idyllic place, where I could be out on my bike all day as long as I was home for sunset and dinner,” he says. “I had a ton of freedom that fundamentally shaped me.”
Thirty years after his acting debut, Hartnett continues seeking that same freedom in his work. “I love that people just want me to do something unexpected,” he says. “It’s a really wonderful place to be as an actor.”
