Josh Hartnett opens up about taking a 2-decade break from big-budget movies

Raechal ShewfeltTue, October 6, 2026 at 12:24 AM UTC

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Josh Hartnett at the ‘Verity’ premiere in New YorkCredit: Mike Coppola/GettyKey Points -

Josh Hartnett was a heartthrob in 2001, and starred in big-budget movies like Pearl Harbor and Black Hawk Down.

At 22, the actor deliberately took a break from those kinds of films.

Now 48, the Verity star reflects that he “I didn’t even know who I was yet” back then.

Two decades ago, Josh Hartnett was everywhere in Hollywood.

In 2001 alone, he starred in Pearl Harbor with Ben Affleck and Kate Beckinsale, Black Hawk Down with Ewan McGregor and Eric Bana, Town & Country with Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton, and more. But a few years later he was keeping a much lower profile — and now he’s opening up about why.

On a recent episode of the Scene Stealers podcast, Hartnett talked about taking a step back from stardom all those years ago and then re-emerging with movies like 2023’s Oppenheimer and the new release Verity. “I was on hiatus from people’s minds, I guess, which is fine,” he said. “You know, in a way, it kind of gives me the ability to come back and be fresh again.”

In his early days, Hartnett was being pushed — hard — as a heartthrob.

“It was a little bit like I was everywhere and I didn’t even know who I was yet,” Hartnett said.

He added, “It wasn’t like I was rejecting it as a whole concept; what I was rejecting was that this is the only thing I want to do with my life. I was 22 years old when I finished Black Hawk Down. and I decided to take about a year off and wrote a screenplay.”

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He also “wanted to try some new things.”

He had fond memories of having played Trip Fontaine in Sofia Coppola’s 1999 movie The Virgin Suicides, which also starred Kirsten Dunst, Kathleen Turner, and James Woods.

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“I loved making this movie,” Hartnett said. “I wanted to find other films that are like that.”

But not everyone was behind his choices at the time.

“When you’re being asked to do things like big film after big film, and you’ve got people that are relying on you — well, part of their income is relying on you doing big films — they tend to get frustrated when you decide to do movies for no money,” Hartnett explained. “And so, I kind of, I pushed myself out of the business side of the business for a while.”

Hartnett previously explained to Entertainment Weekly in 2011 what prompted him to put on the brakes on a career filled with big-budget movies.

Josh Hartnett in ‘The Virgin Suicides’Credit: Everett Collection

“I think that I kind of took a few steps back from Hollywood as soon as it all started to come my way because I wasn’t quite ready for the attention,” he said. “I didn’t want to watch every word that I say. I wanted to develop naturally, so I just decided that being a quote-unquote ‘movie star’ wasn’t for me at that point in my life, so I didn’t do many films for quite a few years. Over the last 10 or 11 years since I finished Black Hawk Down, I’ve only done a handful of films, and a lot of them have been ones that I’ve been involved with behind the scenes. Lately, I’ve been spending more time talking to people out in L.A. and kind of looking at different types of projects. Now I feel more comfortable with where I’m at.”

Harnett was 32 by then.

“I’m not a kid anymore, and I’m not afraid of what people think of me, which is one of the major problems of having a bit of success in this industry when you’re young,” Hartnett said. “You’re still developing, and you see with a lot of people that they kind of go off the deep end. I wasn’t going to allow that to happen to me, so I took a bunch of steps back.”

Suffice to say that Hartnett has since taken several steps forward. He can currently be seen on the big screen in Verity, opposite Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson.

on Entertainment Weekly

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