Josh Hartnett on escaping the heartthrob label to explore more interesting roles

There's no denying that Josh Hartnett, 46, has been experiencing a major renaissance since stepping back into the spotlight over the past few years. Some of his most recent projects include a big-screen return in last summer's Oppenheimer, guest TV roles on Black Mirror and The Bear, and a starring role in the new M. Night Shyamalan thriller, Trap.

For millennials of a certain age, Hartnett is remembered as one of Hollywood's ultimate heartthrobs. Between 1998 and 2002, the actor was an inescapable presence on the big screen. During that time, he became a teen idol with hits like The Faculty, The Virgin Suicides, O and 40 Days and 40 Nights, but it wasn't until his blockbuster roles in Pearl Harbor and Black Hawk Down that he really established himself as a bonafide leading man.

Then, at the height of his fame, Hartnett did something relatively rare for an A-lister. He decided to walk away from the Hollywood machine that made him a star and instead focus his attention on family, indie films and theatre.

"After Pearl Harbor came out and Black Hawk Down was coming out, it felt oddly stifling," Hartnett tells Q's Tom Power in an interview. "I was both young enough and had wise enough people around me that I was able to see that … I wasn't going to be able to create my own identity in a positive way in that environment where everybody else had an opinion on what I should be."

Hartnett says his good friends and family back home in Minnesota encouraged him to be more himself, which wasn't necessarily what movie studios were interested in at the time.

"[I] decided, 'I'm just going to throw caution to the wind and do the thing that I feel is right and develop in the way that I feel I want to develop,'" he tells Power. "It was probably the best thing I ever did for myself. I don't know what I would be today had I just stayed on that treadmill…. I don't think it's super healthy for a young person to have that sort of attention on them."

Now, Hartnett seems to be fully embracing his dad era, seeing as he's played a father in several of his most recent projects.

In Shyamalan's action-packed thriller Trap, the actor plays a father who's taking his teenage daughter to a massive concert (the film's interiors were shot at a stadium in Hamilton, and the exteriors were shot at the Rogers Centre in downtown Toronto).

The actor says it's not a spoiler to say that his character is a serial killer.

"The character is a serial killer and that's the conceit of the movie," Hartnett says. "It's trying to take an audience on a ride that maybe they wouldn't necessarily be comfortable taking because the protagonist is this horrible guy. But at the same time, I mean, it's a Night movie, so it's all done in good fun."

I am now able to be the explorative artist that I wanted to be.- Josh Hartnett

Looking back, Hartnett says he feels incredibly lucky to have had the career he's had, but he's also thankful that he was able to escape his teen heartthrob label.

"I don't advise this as a career strategy if somebody's trying to be an actor," he says, "but I was able to continue to do what I thought were the most interesting roles coming across my desk, and eventually directors that I loved sort of caught up with that notion or were allowed to hire me by the powers that be. And suddenly I'm able to do that again now in a larger format for a broader audience.

"This character [in Trap] is nothing like what I was able to do last year in Oppenheimer, or what I was just able to do in The Bear and what I'm going to do next. I am now able to be the explorative artist that I wanted to be. And people are accepting of it, which I don't think they were when I was younger."

The full interview with Josh Hartnett is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Josh Hartnett produced by Lise Hosein.