Josh Hartnett walks us through his legendary career, discussing his roles in 'The Faculty,' 'The Virgin Suicides,' 'Pearl Harbor,' 'Black Hawk Down,' '40 Days and 40 Nights,' 'Sin City,' 'Lucky Number Slevin,' 'Penny Dreadful,' 'Oppenheimer,' 'Trap' and more.
Director: Adam Lance Garcia
Director of Photography: Jack Belisle
Editor: Cory Stevens
Talent: Josh Hartnett
Producer: Madison Coffey
Line Producer: Romeeka Powell
Associate Producer: Lyla Neely
Production Manager: Andressa Pelachi
Production Coordinator: Elizabeth Hymes
Talent Booker: Lauren Mendoza
Camera Operator: Mar Alfonso
Gaffer: David Djaco
Audio Engineer: Rachel Suffian
Production Assistant: Patrick Willems
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Scout Alter
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Additional Editor: Jason Malizia
Director: Adam Lance Garcia
Director of Photography: Jack Belisle
Editor: Cory Stevens
Talent: Josh Hartnett
Producer: Madison Coffey
Line Producer: Romeeka Powell
Associate Producer: Lyla Neely
Production Manager: Andressa Pelachi
Production Coordinator: Elizabeth Hymes
Talent Booker: Lauren Mendoza
Camera Operator: Mar Alfonso
Gaffer: David Djaco
Audio Engineer: Rachel Suffian
Production Assistant: Patrick Willems
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Scout Alter
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Additional Editor: Jason Malizia
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Everything exceeded my expectations back then because I had no concept of what the movie business was and to go from film to film
00:06I just thought that's the way it was once you once you started making movies, then you just made all the movies
00:20Hi, I'm Josh Hartnett and this is the timeline of my career
00:30I
00:36Wasn't actually interested in film acting I was interested in films
00:40I thought maybe I'd want to direct if I could ever find a way to direct. I loved the art of
00:46Filmmaking and would watch like movie after movie each night and I fell in love with
00:52for Diego Fellini and Louie mall and luci and like a ton of really just
00:58Amazing filmmakers that was sort of my film school
01:00Halloween a show is the first film that I made but I was cast first for the faculty just on this TV show called cracker
01:07I was actually still working on it and
01:09Someone asked me if I'd auditioned for a couple movies met Robert or you guys hadn't read the script and he cast me on the spot
01:15Essentially for Zeke many years afterward. I was like, why would you see me? Like I didn't know what I was doing
01:20He's like it's precisely because you didn't know what you were doing
01:22You were like too cool to have read the script that I thought you'd be perfect for Zeke
01:26It's like it wasn't that I was too cool. It's just I didn't know at all. Robert is such an inclusive director
01:31He just wants to play he's sitting on a skateboard and somebody's pulling him with a rope and he's holding the camera like this
01:36and so he has this sense that like everything is sort of homemade and fun and
01:42Anything is possible as long as you get it in the can. I learned a lot from Robert on that one
01:47I also like Jon Stewart
01:49Look sorry to impose and disrupt mr. Furlong, but you kindly take your seats. This will be over quite quickly
01:58He hadn't released his first book yet, but he's like like tested some of the material out on us
02:02Let me read an early early edition of it and Jon Stewart became who he is clearly
02:07I don't know. It's just such a weird eclectic group of people Robert Patrick
02:11BB Neuwirth and all the rest of the adult actors. They didn't really mingle with us younger actors
02:17We were our own little crew, you know, we could watch them work, but really they were all sort of enigmatic to us
02:22I was just trying to pick it up as I went along and I had no concept of like craft
02:26But I was picking up little things from other older actors who were around me or actors who were younger who'd been working a long
02:32Time like Elijah really had an idea of how he wanted to make that character just trying to fake it
02:37On this particular day. He ran into mr. Woodhouse in the hall and ducked into the nearest class
02:48Meeting Sofia for virgin suicides. I could see the artistry in her
02:55Bearing she just is an artist. I obviously knew her father was I had an expectation of what?
03:02She would be doing based off of his work. He was producing it
03:05so I expected like him to have a
03:08Strong hand in the filmmaking process and none of that was true. All of my expectations were false
03:12She decided to write her own version of the script and deliver it to the producers and they loved her script
03:17And then she pitched them on her being a first-time director and they said yes. I mean that takes
03:23Incredible gumption and yet she is like the quietest most
03:29Sane
03:31director
03:32In the world and I just respected her
03:35Entirely she had an enormous amount of integrity a rare talent and being able to capture something. That's absolutely spectacular
03:42Beautiful and ephemeral and do it with such ease and grace
03:46As opposed to being something that's that's that's like a monster a film set can be a monster
03:51It can be a real brutish thing
03:53You've got to work really hard to get these shots in this amount of hours
03:56It's Sofia
03:56There was just always an ease about the film set and that was exciting and I think those films those initial films sort of spoiled
04:03Me made me think that all film processes would be that way and not all of them are some of them are hard to work
04:09But I had a lot of fun on those first films
04:12My dad took me up a couple times
04:14Just don't do what he doing. What do you call it when you flip over?
04:25Pearl Harbor was by far the biggest film that I've worked on and I was trepidatious about it because I was very happy with
04:32the amount of work that I was getting and the type of directors I was working with and
04:36was I think getting a reputation for
04:41Being an actor that would play a lot of different types of roles
04:43I'd played Iago essentially in a modern adaptation of Othello an archetypical bad guy and Tripp Fontaine
04:50isn't necessarily a very nice guy either and then very kind of
04:54Innocent and fun in in other roles and was able to kind of work on all these different characters
04:59I wasn't sure if I wanted to blow that up by becoming a type. Also ultimately I was thinking maybe you're afraid of this
05:06Big film because you're afraid of you know traditional success or something. And so I decided maybe I'll take the
05:14The scary path and be a part of it
05:25You read the script and you know, it's not going to be a direct
05:30historical
05:31Film it is a romance and you know a few years after Titanic had come out and they wanted to
05:37capitalize on a similar sort of
05:39Audience and that Michael Bay makes big spectacle films
05:43He's interested in large aspects of filmmaking and it's not necessarily about the intimate moments
05:48That said I get along with Michael really well
05:51I think a lot of people at that time were saying that he's a very difficult director to work with and what blah blah blah blah
05:56And like watch out. I didn't have that experience at all
05:59I think Ben took the brunt of some of Michael's unhappiness at times whenever things would go wrong
06:03But they already had a relationship, but I didn't have that experience
06:06I think maybe because I was so green that he just took it easy on me
06:10You left her to fight somebody else's war and you made damn sure that I didn't go with you
06:14We thought that you were dead. I almost did died
06:17You know son of a bitch her face was the last thing that went through my mind
06:20So don't stay in here and tell me act like it's alright. Yeah, well I stayed in the end. The movie was
06:27Popular and it was and I was on the cover of a lot of magazines and it did change the way that people perceived
06:32Me like I sort of anticipated
06:34but I guess I didn't anticipate like
06:36how the how that would feel to be inside of it as opposed to like seeing it from the outside viewing somebody in the
06:40midst of sort of a
06:42Celebrity moment is different than what it feels like on the inside and at the age of was like 21
06:47It's I didn't have the foresight to sort of understand that I guess I would say that it felt
06:52Simultaneously exciting because everybody was interested in me being in
06:57Their next film and I was able to go work with Ridley Scott directly afterward
07:01I was able to work with Harrison Ford not too long after that
07:05I was able to kind of work with people that I'd always
07:07Admired the other side of the business the sort of celebrity aspect of it wasn't really my thing
07:12I didn't fit in with that celebrity moment, which was very MTV at the time
07:16You know and I wasn't really that kind of a guy and I think I was too young to have
07:21Found myself as a human being and so I was trying to find myself in the midst of everyone else defining me
07:27And I just found myself feeling a little bit
07:31Frustrated that I wasn't being represented the way that I wanted to be represented which isn't the way it works
07:37but I didn't know that because I was too young it felt discombobulating and
07:41I looked for you know, the things that I find most
07:47Stabilizing which is like family and friends back home
07:51First
08:03It was a natural progression for me because it happened so organically we had finished Pearl Harbor
08:10Jerry Brockheimer called me and said would you like to meet Ridley Scott? I was like, yes
08:14We had a great conversation and he was like, would you like to play this role?
08:18And I said absolutely and I was happened to be the first one cast. It is an ensemble film
08:22So I didn't ever expect to be on the poster or anything like that
08:26It was just I wanted to work with Ridley. I want to see his process
08:29I wanted to be a part of it because I was the first one cast
08:31I didn't know how stacked the cast would be but it is just filled with so many amazing actors entirely different directing styles between
08:38Black Hawk Down and Pearl Harbor. I
08:40Wouldn't compare the two except for the fact they both exist in a overarching genre of war film
08:47they don't have
08:49much else in the way of like narrative comparison or
08:52Aesthetic comparison they could be completely different genres
08:56And I think in a way they are even though Jerry Bruckheimer's the obvious connective tissue there having produced them both
09:01But I tried not to compare them at all
09:03He's more looking at what Ridley had done recently and trying to kind of live up to what I believed
09:07Were the sort of amazing performances in his films over the last few years and again still trying to figure out how to act
09:14Which is you know, also, you know daunting no sex for Lent for 40 days if I can do that then everything will be okay
09:22That isn't what Lent is
09:23Lent is about sacrifice and growth through self-denial
09:26Lent is to remember how Christ felt during fast in the desert. I know exactly I grew up in the same house as you moron
09:3240 days and 40 nights is
09:34probably not a traditional choice to make I wouldn't probably
09:40go back and
09:42do the same thing, although I really enjoyed the process of working with Michael Lehman and
09:49The writer became a friend of mine
10:04The thing is of its time, but it was different for its time
10:08You know, it was trying to twist the concept of the things that were happening at that time
10:12There were a lot of like sexy comedies being made and I thought this was funnier because it was an anti sexy comedy
10:19It probably didn't age. Well, I haven't seen it in a long time
10:24I haven't seen it since it came out every chance I get to make comedy
10:27I want to go do it because I just I love being on a comedic set you get the most instant gratification
10:31You know when you're on a drama, maybe things are working in the right direction and it might work out
10:35But there's so many things that could go wrong in the edit on a comedy if it's not funny
10:39You can tell that on set but when it is funny, you know that too
10:43And so you get to go home feeling good about yourself
10:45And even though it's very difficult to do sometimes you make really funny scenes. She only goes stiff for a moment
10:52care for a smoke
10:58Sure take one are you as bored by that crowd as I am?
11:05I didn't come here for the party
11:08Came here for you
11:09Robert Rodriguez and I had maintained contact since doing the faculty because I had said to Robert on set supposedly
11:16I don't believe this but he says that I said to him if you want me to come back and like sweep the floors for
11:21You I'll do it. Thank you for casting me in my first film
11:23I might have said that I don't know you'll have to ask Robert
11:26So Robert called me and he said time to cash in those chips. I've got this movie
11:31I really want to do called Sin City Frank Miller's unsure. It's his baby
11:36Will you come down to Austin so I can show him what I want to do with it?
11:39And we'll just shoot one scene Frank's gonna be there and we can all sort of talk about it
11:43I said, yes, of course, I will Robert because I owe you and so I came down and then
11:49Frank got very excited about the scene. He loved the visuals
11:53Robert was in real time on the screen basically showing what the shop would look like
11:58We were shooting on green obviously
11:59But you could get a sense of what it was gonna look like and that book really intense black and white
12:03It was unlike anything they've been done before. I was like you guys gonna make the coolest movie
12:07See you later after we had dinner
12:09And I went off to shoot something else and a couple months later
12:12He said Josh we come back down to shoot one more scene. I think we're to put the scene in the movie
12:15I said absolutely and I came down and they were just like in the midst of finishing the film and they made this wonderful film
12:21It's great experience. They had a wonderful time. Apparently I wasn't there for it. I would know involvement
12:27So, thank you Robert. So I shoot the last scene two minutes just standing in an elevator and then they put it in the film
12:32Do you want to give me ninety six thousand dollars? No, do you want to give me ninety six thousand dollars? No
12:38Should I I don't know should you I
12:43Don't know should I Paul is a notoriously
12:48Malcontented human being and he's Scottish and I love him to death. He's got a really nice accent. He wears really nice hats
12:57he's just like a real character and he's just always very upset with everything but
13:02underneath that sort of like
13:04Grumpy exterior. He's a real artist
13:07He's like an absolute artist and on wicker park there were things that he wanted to do that
13:11I know he couldn't fit into that film and that framework
13:14You just see that there was something that he was struggling to get out because he had done this movie called gangster number one
13:18That had a lot more sort of a sort of a rough edge to it
13:20And we wanted that for lucky number seven. We did a little rewriting a little tweaking and my buddy Jason
13:26He said what do you think about a towel? And I was like, what do you mean?
13:30He's like, well, do you think Slevin should be wearing a towel for the first bit of the movie?
13:34Like just got out of the shower. I was like, yes, that's an amazing idea how to make yourself as
13:39Unthreatening as possible when you're going to try to kill a couple of drug lords. Oh, there it is
13:56Oh
14:05When I spoke to John Logan about the character to begin with it's all about tragedy and secrets, right?
14:12He's dealing with something that feels like a trauma that he can't articulate and he's having these blackouts
14:19And there are other other symptoms that kind of go into
14:24That like his alcoholism and all that sort of stuff that I feel like could be neatly placed on other things that are more human
14:31And so I didn't have to go very far to sort of understand where he might be coming from
14:35I don't think he at the beginning of this knew exactly what he was. He's running. He's just constantly running
14:40He's he's as far away from where he came from as possible. How do you develop that character?
14:45We had a big open slate and I had a lot of good conversations with John Logan
14:48We got to a point where we were able to sort of come up with that season 3 arc Brian Cox playing my father
14:54Which was amazing the whole experience of working on something for a long time with a long arc like that was was very satisfying
15:02it's a difficult one because
15:04You can get in a situation where you could just let him be a werewolf and that's it
15:08Like that's the big reveal and that's it
15:10I'm really glad that they were they were interested in kind of exploring
15:14How he became who he is and how he deals with it and where he goes from there
15:18He must be off at Heimer. Yes. I hear you want to start a school of quantum theory
15:23I am starting it next door. They put you in there. I asked for it
15:27I wanted to be close to you experimentalists theory will get you only so far
15:31I knew Chris from earlier in my career. We didn't work together and there's all sorts of you know
15:37Conjecture and you know conversations that go on around around this. I was never offered Batman
15:42So like let's like put that to bed
15:45Chris has said it I've said it multiple times
15:47We just talked about it. I thought maybe I'd never hear from him again. It was big regret of mine that I didn't pursue
15:55Working with him with like more vigor back when I was younger because I knew he was a fantastic filmmaker
16:01And I knew that being able to sort of like foster relationships with great filmmakers is really what this business is about as an actor
16:08and then he
16:10Brought me the script. I read it and we talked about Ernst Lawrence. He told me right off the bat
16:16He's like, this is a real character
16:17There are a lot of characters in this but this character is important to killings Lee and we've got these other guys
16:22then it's like it's gonna be a big deal and
16:25I was I was flattered really flattered to be a part of that crew
16:29I feel like I could see one of those dark stars that you're working on
16:33You can't
16:34It's the whole point
16:36gravity swallows light
16:39It's like a kind of hole in space
16:41What's amazing about working with Chris Nolan is that everybody there knows how important the film could be how wonderful the film could be
16:47Because of his presence and is there to help him make it wonderful and nobody's there to kind of give themselves
16:53You know a big ego kick because you can't there's like no there's no structure for that on it on a Chris Nolan set
16:58You're all there just working. You don't even have a chair to sit on you're literally there focused on it
17:04All the crew members are people that worked with Chris in the past. So it feels like a family
17:07That's a overused phrase, but it really does it's a wonderful experience and I would do it again in a heartbeat
17:22What happened I think that woman drank too much lost her balance
17:27Let's clear up give us some space. I've always wanted to work with night
17:30I would have probably done almost anything with night because I've always found him to be
17:36one of the most fascinating filmmakers in our business terribly underrated sometimes for his
17:42Amazing abilities as just a straight teller of interesting stories in this situation
17:48What really highlighted my interest the character Cooper is so neon colored
17:54He's so dark and he's so light and there's so much in between and it needs to all be grounded somehow
18:02Hey
18:03We should climb down and see where it leads. It looks really cool
18:07What?
18:08Would it be unbelievable to see what's down there? Yeah, they put on the show
18:13There might be costumes in things
18:15That's crazy. We can't go down there
18:18Acting strange something wrong dad
18:23No
18:24Knight's gonna use his camera the way that he uses his camera
18:27He's gonna approach this thriller genre the way he does from a different angle
18:32He's gonna make his traditional antagonist into the protagonist
18:35And so people are gonna have to follow this character and be interested in him the whole way through and there are very few films
18:40Probably that I've seen where I would follow a character like this
18:44Through to the end and still feel like an understate like I understood what the journey was for him
18:50you know and
18:51That was our challenge and I feel like when a challenge like that is is is put in your lap
18:56You have to take it. It's just it's so rare to be able to get a to get a role like that
19:03We all have this like innate ability in our youth to kind of like find our own way and make sure that we know
19:11what direction we want to head before we listen to other people and we try we fight against the sort of social norms coming in
19:17And restricting our choices. You just got to try to hold on to it
19:20It's really rewarding when it works out and even if it doesn't work out it still feels
19:25Okay