Josh Hartnett was a Hollywood sensation in his early 20s before stepping away from the limelight for a more peaceful existence. “People’s attention to me at the time was borderline unhealthy,” Hartnett, 46, shared with The Guardian in a profile released on Sunday, July 28. “I just didn’t want my life to be swallowed up by my work.”
He added, “There was a notion at that time you just kind of give it all up. And you saw what happened to some people back then. They got obliterated by it. I didn’t want that for myself.”
Hartnett also mentioned stalking “incidents” as the catalyst for his break from fame. “Well, look, I don’t want to give this a lot of weight … [but] people showed up at my house. People that were stalking me,” he recounted to the British newspaper before describing an event when he was 27. “A guy showed up at one of my premieres with a gun, claiming to be my father. He ended up in prison. There were lots of things. It was a weird time. And I wasn’t going to be grist for the mill.”
Hartnett has maintained his acting career, recently appearing in the Oscar-winning Oppenheimer and M. Night Shyamalan‘s thriller Trap. Between film projects, Hartnett has settled into a comfortable life with his spouse, Tamsin Egerton, and their four children in the English countryside.
Hartnett and Egerton, 35, reside in Hampshire, with the former child actor telling the newspaper that “nobody [nearby] cares” about his celebrity status. In England, he can prioritize being a father. “Time passes quickly. With four children, you have so much to do,” he remarked. “In a way, less is happening. But more of the important stuff is happening. My oldest daughter is eight and a half now – that feels like it happened in the last two years to me. So I’m trying to soak up as much as possible.”
In Trap, Hartnett portrays a “psychopath” and was cautious not to let the intense emotions affect his family life. “I tried not to bring much of myself to the role nor let much of this character come home with me because — if you want to be blunt — all of it, everything that [my character] is doing in this film, is basically a front,” Hartnett exclusively told Us Weekly at the Wednesday, July 24, film premiere. “There’s no way that he could feel empathy toward his daughter. He couldn’t love her the way that we love.”
Trap debuts in theaters on Friday, August 2.
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