Biography
One of the crop of obscenely attractive young stars to pop up during the late 1990s, Josh Hartnett has the kind of strong-jawed, puppy-eyed looks that make him equally suited for both movie stardom and Tommy Hilfiger ads.
Hartnett was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on July 21, 1978. Following his high school graduation, he attended New York's SUNY-Purchase, but his time there ended after he was offered a role on the short-lived TV series
Cracker. He also did a number of TV commercials and plays, and in 1998 he got his screen break with the plum role of
Jamie Lee Curtis' son in Halloween: H20. Although the film received poor reviews, it did moderately well at the box office, and that same year Hartnett's profile further increased when he starred in
The Faculty. One of a number of films to exploit the current trend in teen horror movies, it featured Hartnett fighting off alien teachers alongside the likes of fellow up-and-comers
Elijah Wood and
Shawn Hatosy. Although the film didn't do as well as expected, thanks in part to the fact that the teen horror craze was beginning to lose steam, it in no way interfered with the increasing number of opportunities available to the young actor.
Hartnett could subsequently be seen in a number of diverse films; among his projects in 2000 alone, he played an Iago-like character in
O, the teen re-telling of Othello; the son of
Warren Beatty and
Diane Keaton in the comedy-drama
Town and Country; and the paramour of the eldest of the ill-fated Lisbon sisters in
Sofia Coppola's adaptation of
The Virgin Suicides. His pattern of starring in films with steadily-increasing budgets reached its apex in 2001 when Hartnett appeared in director
Michael Bay's World War II action drama
Pearl Harbor, playing Danny, a young soldier who falls in love with his best friend's main squeeze amid the chaos of the titular conflict. Later that same year Hartnett would fight a whole new war in
Ridley Scott's Oscar-winning war drama
Black Hawk Down, and shortly after swearing off sex for
40 Days and 40 Nights and hitting the street beat with
Harrison Ford in the coolly-received buddy cop comedy
Hollywood Homicide, the handsome heartthrob would make public his desire to shift his attentions away from blockbuster territory in order to focus his talents on smaller films of increased quality - even if it did mean a leaner paycheck. Though subsequent rumors of his potential involvement with the long-in-development Superman film would seem to betray this sentiment, lower-profile roles in such independent-minded efforts as Sin City and Mozart and the Whale ultimately served to underscore the maturing actor's sincerity. Of course Hartnett wasn't averse to appearing in the occasional mainstream effort, with roles in
Wicker Park and Lucky Number Sleven serving to occupy a curious cinematic middle ground between the indie and blockbuster mindsets.
By the time Hartnett took a prominent role in
Brian De Palma's 2006 true crime drama
The Black Dahlia, it appeared as if the actor's willingness to challenge himself onscreen had finally begun to pay off. A dark look at the Hollywood underbelly based on author James Ellroy's best-selling novel,
The Black Dahlia preceded an introspective turn as an emerging sports writer who befriends a former boxing champ many had thought dead in
Resurrecting the Champ, and a highly challenging role as legendary jazz trumpeter Chet Baker in director
Bruce Beresford's The Prince of Cool.
~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide