Josh Hartnett

Josh Hartnett (birthname: Joshua Daniel Hartnett) rose quickly as a promising and handsome leading man and then faded into relative obscurity until re-emerging to greater prominence in movies directed by the likes of Christopher Nolan and Guy Ritchie.

Hartnett won instant acclaim (including an MTV Movie Award nomination for best breakthrough male performance) for his feature debut role in the seventh $75 million-grossing Halloween movie, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998), with Jamie Lee Curtis, Adam Arkin, Michelle Williams, Janet Leigh, LL Cool J, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, followed by his first co-starring role in Robert Rodriguez’s sci-fi horror movie, The Faculty (1998), with Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Shawn Hatosy, Famke Janssen, Piper Laurie, Bebe Neuwirth, Robert Patrick, Jon Stewart, and Elijah Wood, and grossing over $63 million for Miramax Films.

Hartnett was cast by debuting filmmaker Sofia Coppola for her film adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’ first novel, The Virgin Suicides (1999), co-starring James Woods, Kathleen Turner, Kirsten Dunst, Scott Glenn, and Danny DeVito, premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, and grossing $10.4 million. Hartnett co-starred in 20^th Century Fox’s widely lambasted drama, Here on Earth (2000), with Chris Klein and Leelee Sobieski, and then Hartnett proved his action movie cred in his first big lead role in Ridley Scott’s Oscar-winning Black Hawk Down (2001), co-starring Eric Bana, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, William Fichtner, and Sam Shepard, and grossing $173 million globally.

Josh Hartnett shifted to rom-com mode in the Paddy Breathnach-directed Blow Dry (2001), with Alan Rickman, Natasha Richardson, Rachel Griffiths, Rachael Leigh Cook, Bill Nighy, Rosemary Harris, and Heidi Klum, and then to modernized Shakespeare with director Tim Blake Nelson’s adaptation of Othello, O (2001), starring Mekhi Phifer, Julia Stiles, Rain Phoenix, John Heard, and Martin Sheen, earning $16 million for Lionsgate.

Hartnett landed the top co-starring role in producer-director Michael Bay’s WWII movie, Pearl Harbor (2001), starring Ben Affleck, with Kate Beckinsale, Cuba Gooding Jr., Tom Sizemore, Jon Voight, Colm Feore, and Alec Baldwin, and receiving a combination of widely negative reviews and great box office totals of over $449 million.

Hartnett joined the starry cast of the Buck Henry-written comedy, Town & Country (2001), starring Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, Garry Shandling, Andie MacDowell, Jenna Elfman, Nastassja Kinski, and Charlton Heston, and bombing with a disastrous $10 million return on a $105 million budget. Hartnett then starred in a bona fide hit ($95 million gross) with the Michael Lehmann-directed 40 Days and 40 Nights (2002), with Shannyn Sossamon, Vinessa Shaw, and Griffin Dunne.

Josh Hartnett co-starred with Harrison Ford in the buddy cop movie, Hollywood Homicide (2003), co-written, produced, and directed by Ron Shelton, and with Lena Olin, Bruce Greenwood, Isaiah Washington, Lolita Davidovich, Dwight Yoakam, and Martin Landau, but tanking with a poor $51 million return. Hartnett starred in another box-office dud with the Paul McGuigen-directed thriller, Wicker Park (2004), with Rose Byrne and Diane Kruger, and produced and released by MGM, and then Hartnett starred with Radha Mitchell in another commercial dud, Mozart and the Whale (2005), directed by Petter Naess and written by Ron Bass.

Hartnett went from a minor role in Robert Rodriguez’s and Frank Miller’s anthology movie, Sin City (2005), starring Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Benicio del Toro, Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke, and Elijah Wood, to starring in another noir with Brian De Palma’s version of James Ellroy’s 1987 Los Angeles historical crime novel, The Black Dahlia (2006), with Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, and Fiona Shaw, earning a disappointing $49.3 million global gross.

Hartnett then starred as a “wrong man” character in the Paul McGuigan-directed thriller, Lucky Number Slevin (2006), co-starring Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley, Lucy Liu, Stanley Tucci, Mykelti Williamson, and Danny Aiello, and grossing a decent $56.3 million worldwide (on a $27 million budget).

Josh Hartnett co-starred with Samuel L. Jackson in the money-losing boxing drama, Resurrecting the Champ (2007), with Kathryn Morris, Alan Alda, Rachel Nichols, David Paymer, and Teri Hatcher, under Rod Lurie’s direction. Then Hartnett starred in one of his few horror movies, the David Slade-directed 30 Days of Night (2007), with Melissa George, Danny Huston, Ben Foster, and Mark Boone Junior. Hartnett was, for the first time, star and producer on the indie drama, August (2008), directed by Austin Chick, and co-starring Naomie Harris, David Bowie, Rip Torn, Adam Scott, and Emmanuelle Chriqui, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival and doing disastrous business ($12,000+ returns on a $3.4 million budget) and very negative reviews.

Hartnett then worked abroad in films, such as the Belgian-produced time-travel adventure, writer-director Roland Joffé’s The Lovers (2013), with Alice Englert, Tamsin Egerton, and Bipasha Basu, followed by Hartnett co-starring with James Franco and writer-director-star Robert Duvall in Duvall’s poorly-received Western, Wild Horses (2015), released by Entertainment One Films. Hartnett co-starred in the U.S.-Japan co-production, Oh Lucy! (2017), co-written and directed by Atsuko Hirayanagi (expanding her short film of the same title), and with Kōji Yakusho, and premiering at the Cannes Film Festival’s Critics Week competition before a release by Film Movement.

Josh Hartnett, after appearing in a string of minor films with The Ottoman Lieutenant (2017), Inherit the Viper (2019), She’s Missing (2019). Target Number One (2020), starred in Polish filmmaker Lech Majewski’s little-seen drama, Valley of the Gods (2020), with John Malkovich, Berenice Marlohe, Keir Dullea, and John Rhys-Davies, and Hartnett followed with a starring role in writer-producer-director John Swab’s crime thriller, Ida Red (2021), with Frank Grillo, Melissa Leo, and William Forsythe, and premiering at the Locarno Film Festival.

Hartnett then appeared in two movies from director/writer/producer Guy Ritchie: Wrath of Man (2021), starring Jason Statham, Holt McCallany, Jeffrey Donovan, Raul Castillo, and Eddie Marsan, and grossing a solid $104 million; and then Ritchie’s spy comedy, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023), starring Statham, Aubrey Plaza, Cary Elwes, Marsan, and Hugh Grant, and earning a disappointing $49 million gross.

Filmmaker Christopher Nolan picked Hartnett to portray Ernest Lawrence in the widely acclaimed, seven-Oscar-winning biopic, Oppenheimer (2023), starring Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, and Kenneth Branagh, and grossing a phenomenal $976 million global theatrical take. Hartnett finally returned to a starring role in a major studio-backed wide release with director/writer/producer M. Night Shyamalan’s psychological thriller, Trap (2024), with Saleka Shyamalan, Ariel Donoghue, Hayley Mills, and Alison Pill, and released by Warner Bros.

Hartnett reunited with James Franco (as star-director-producer) of the indie film adaptation of William Gay’s 1999 Depression-era novel, The Long Home (date to be announced), co-starring Josh Hutcherson, Tim Blake Nelson, Courtney Love, Timothy Hutton, Giancarlo Esposito, and Ashton Kutcher. Hartnett then starred in writer-director Guy Moshe’s thriller, The Last Draw of Jack of Hearts (date to be announced), produced by Chimera Pictures, Disrupting Influence, and Lituanica Films.