Biography

		Life Story
		Film and Career

Tall, dark-haired and boyishly handsome with a quietly imposing presence and a demeanor at once confident and charmingly self-effacing, Josh Hartnett got his start playing the troubled son of the titular crime stopper in the short-lived ABC remake of the British series "Cracker" (1997-98) and made an impressive big screen debut in an unlikely vehicle, "Halloween: H20". This 1998 installment of the horror film series featured the actor as John, the son of Jamie Lee Curtis' tormented Laurie Strode. 

While the movie contained more screaming and bleeding than compelling performing the young actor made the most of his role, capably conveying the character's sensitivity, will and determination. 

Hartnett proved a commanding screen presence when cast in the Robert Rodriguez-Kevin Williamson sci-fi teen thriller "The Faculty" (also 1998) as Zeke, one of a group of students struggling to stop an alien invasion starting at their high school. 

As an exceptionally bright and crafty young man who nevertheless is repeating his senior year, he played the roguish cool kid, Herrington High's resident smart aleck genius, who uses his brains and effort to synthesize and peddle drugs for student body customers rather than to pass classes. 

With a take on the character that allowed a glimpse of his kindness and loyalty as well as his intelligence and survival instincts Hartnett held his own alongside more experienced co-stars such as Elijah Wood, and contributed a most endearing character to the film.

With the requisite teen horror credits behind him and a clued-in young audience in his corner, Hartnett would next prove himself in Sofia Coppola's feature directorial debut "The Virgin Suicides" (1999), bringing life to school heartthrob Trip Fontaine in this 1970s-set atmospheric coming-of-age piece. 

A fine adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides' popular cult novel, the film was an underground hit, and when Trip comes on the scene to the tune of Heart's "Magic Man", the actor's own sex symbol status was confirmed. In the less impressive romantic drama "Here on Earth" (also 2001) he co-starred as the good-hearted small town boy who inexplicably loses his childhood sweetheart (Leelee Sobieski) to Chris Klein's cocky prep school student. 

Playing the son of Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton in the comedy-drama "Town & Country" (2001) would expose the actor to an older audience, while a featured supporting role in the Yorkshire-set "Blow Dry" (also 2001) showcased a capable northern British accent.

Hartnett's featured turn as Hugo, the Iago character in a prep-school set, modern retelling of "Othello" entitled "O" (filmed in 1999) would sit shelved for some time before seeing the light of day. The victim of numerous release date shifts, the film, starring Mekhi Pfeifer as the wronged Odin, went through a series of shifting release dates when incidences of school violence gave Miramax pause. Eventually Lions Gate stepped in and agreed to open the film in theaters in late summer 2001.

Cast in a lead role in Michael Bay's epic "Pearl Harbor", Hartnett was poised to enter the ranks of young Hollywood's elite. In the 2001 film he played US Air Force pilot Danny Walker, the lifelong friend of presumed dead Rafe McCawley (Ben Affleck). Rafe's intended Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale) and Danny cross paths and fall in love, much to the chagrin of the returned Rafe. 

A love story with a historical setting helmed by a director known for his action features, the much-anticipated "Pearl Harbor" was likened to 1997's "Titanic", but even if it didn't mirror it's predecessor's monumental success, the feature would likely put Hartnett at the top of the heap. 

Though lensed in 1999, a role in the cheeky romantic comedy "40 Days and 40 Nights" (2002) cast the young actor as a brokenhearted soul who gives up sex for Lent, only to almost immediately meet the girl of his dreams, while Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down" (2002), a look at the botched United States humanitarian mission to Somalia, returned him to the big budget political genre.

In 2003, Hartnett joined Harrison Ford for the fast paced action comedy, "Hollywood Homicide," a feature that provided a rare inside look at the professional and personal lives of two Los Angeles Police Department officers. Harnett was cast as Ford's reluctant partner, K.C. Calden, who is more interested in teaching yoga and pursuing an acting career than he is in detective work. 

The generational and attitudinal differences between the lead characters was supposed to provide comic friction in the film, but critics and audiences found a decided lack of chemistry between Ford and Hartnett. 

Hartnett also had difficulty emerging into a solo leading man role with his next film "Wicker Park" (2004), an ineffective erotic thriller with a stalker-ish theme inspired by the French film "L'Appartement" (1996) in which Hartnett was unable to draw the audience into his obsessions for director Paul McGuigan in the way, say, James Stewart could for Alfred Hitchcock.

The actor was better served by his brief but memorable turn in director Robert Rodriguez and writer-artist Frank Miller's visually arresting adaptation of Miller's crime noir comic book series "Sin City" (2005). Hartnett played the suave, romantic and chameleon-like assassin in the opening segment culled from Miller's short graphic tale "The Babe Wore Red" as well as the film's original coda—indeed, Hartnett and actress Marley Shelton appeared in the sequence as a favor to Rodriguez, who shot it with his own finances to win Miller's approval for the eventual feature film. 

Hartnett gave a fine performance in his next film, “Lucky Number Slevin” (2006), a neo-noir thriller about a mild-mannered young man mistaken by two rival crime lords, The Boss (Morgan Freeman) and The Rabbi (Ben Kingsley), for being someone who owes them money. Caught in the middle of the two bosses, and under constant surveillance from a relentless detective (Stanley Tucci) and an infamous assassin (Bruce Willis), the young man must hatch an ingenious plan to get them before they get him.

He next starred in “The Black Dahlia” (2006), Brian De Palma’s take on James Ellroy’s complicated and richly-textured noir thriller about two hard-edged cops (Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart) who descend into obsession, corruption and sexual degeneracy as they investigate the brutal murder of would-be actress Elizabeth Short, who was found tortured and vivisected in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. 

Shot almost entirely in Bulgaria, the film made a strong debut at the 2006 Venice International Film Festival. While buzz for “The Black Dahlia” heated up, Hartnett was in New Zealand shooting “30 Days of Night” (lensed 2006), a thriller about a flock of vampires that descend upon a small Alaskan town during the dark months of winter. 

He was also cast to star as troubled jazz trumpeter Chet Baker in “Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker” (lensed 2006), a focused biopic concentrating on his time spent in Rome during the 1960s, the height of his international stardom and his problems with heroin addiction. ~ Yahoo Movies!

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