“You know, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be in Pearl Harbor because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be so much in the spotlight,” says Hartnett, whose anointment as “the next big thing” in Hollywood has been cemented by his cover spread in Vanity Fair’s recent issue. “I was feeling good in the position that I was in, which was doing a lot of pretty good small movies, working a lot and also being able to go out in public.”

Just 21 years old when Pearl Harbor director Michael Bay made him the offer he couldn’t refuse, the actor was then only known by a handful of moviegoers, as the cold-hearted guy from The Virgin Suicides or the doe-eyed brokenhearted lover in Here on Earth. The Minnesota native was doing just fine, having booked work steadily since he ventured to Los Angeles in 1997, snagging the role of Robert Pastorelli’s son in the short-lived television series Cracker.

He was even successful enough that he was able to happily leave Los Angeles when the series ended, to return to Minneapolis to live, coming back to Hollywood just to take meetings and go on auditions.

“The Midwest, it keeps you grounded,” Hartnett explains. “My family and friends are there. And L.A., I think that it’s just a town about this business, and if you’re really serious about being an actor, — excuse the expression — it’s masturbatory to just be inside of that, in that whole world when you’re just feeding off of yourself. It’s cannibalism, that’s what it is, and I like to be somewhere else and get stories from other places.”

That desire to keep a low profile has certainly been blown out of the water by the massive success of Pearl Harbor. And despite Josh Hartnett’s professed longing to stay under the radar of fame, that’s an impossible dream at this point in his young life.

Plus, the 6-foot 3-inch hunk has a series of new films lined up, which will most likely cement his position as the young man to watch. He’ll be seen this August in O opposite Julia Stiles and Mekhi Pfifer, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Othello set in an urban high school. That film, made almost three years ago, will show Hartnett at a younger age.
“I play Hugo [Iago in the original play], but that’s been years ago. I wonder if my performance is going to hold any water now,” he says frankly. “I have to say, it’s too bad that it didn’t come out earlier because it’s hard for me to really love it, but it’s been so long that I’m not even sure if I would do it the same now.”

He’ll also be seen later this year in 40 Days and 40 Nights, a romantic comedy “about a guy who gives up sex for Lent, to get over relationship problems, and it drives him crazy.”

And if those two films aren’t enough, Hartnett is currently playing the lead character in Black Hawk Down, director Ridley Scott’s (Gladiator, Hannibal) latest big-budget modern-war adventure flick.

“It’s another big movie, I know, but I really wanted to work with Ridley,” Hartnett says somewhat sheepishly when confronted with the fact that film, too, will make him instantly recognizable to the world. “I’m just going to keep working with people I want to work with. I guess I just hope this fame thing doesn’t get too out of hand for me. I think I’ll be able to deal with it, just keep it in my life the way I have to. And eventually, people will get sick of seeing me out in public and they’ll leave me alone again.”
— Jenny Peters