Two decades after the fact, Josh Harnett opened up about his decision to leave Los Angeles at the peak of his fame.
“I just didn’t want my life to be swallowed up by my work,” the 46-year-old star of M. Night Shyamalan’s new film “Trap” said in a guardian interview published on Sunday. “And there was a notion at that time that I would just give it all up. And you saw what happened to some people then. They were blown away by it. I didn’t want that for myself.”
Harnett’s journey in Hollywood began when he gained attention playing notable roles in indie films such as “The Faculty” and “The Virgin Suicides” in the late 1990s. Then came leading roles in the 2001 films “Black Hawk Down” and “Pearl Harbor” and 2002’s “40 Days and 40 Nights.”
But he wasn’t keen on the fame that came with these high-profile roles – not to mention the hero or heartthrob jobs he was offered – and soon after doing these big-budget films, he walked away from the spotlights, moving. he returns to his home state of Minnesota and cuts ties with his agents. After about 18 months, he returned to the industry, declining big-budget roles and instead taking work in smaller indie films.
The “Pearl Harbor” actor now lives in the UK on a marriage visa with his wife, British actor Tamsin Egerton, after going back and forth between the UK andNew York for years. The two met while filming Roland Joffe’s film “The Lovers” in 2011, began a relationship the following year and welcomed the first of their four children in 2015. They later moved to the British countryside, and in 2022, he revealed that married secretly in 2021.
Harnett says the humble country life gives her more time with her children than her life in New York and Los Angeles ever did.
“People just want to talk about your career” in New York and LA, he told the Guardian. But in the UK, he said, “nobody cares”.
“I never expected it. And time passes quickly. With four children, you have so much to do. In a way, less happens. But more of the important things happen. My oldest daughter is 8 ½ hours – what it seems to have happened to me in the last two years. So I try to absorb as much as possible.”
In “Trap,” Hartnett plays a devoted father who takes his daughter to a pop star concert — but director Shyamalan is known for his twist endings (think “The Sixth Sense” and “The Village”). And the film’s trailer reveals a twist of course: Dad is actually a serial killer known as the Butcher.
“Trap” hits theaters in the United States on Friday.
