Josh Hartnett Shares What It Was Like Being a Heartthrob In the ’90s

Josh Hartnett is no stranger to the term “heartthrob” — and he’s not shying away from it.

In the latest issue of Men’s Health, the 46-year-old actor looks back on the term that was connected to his name, as he rose to fame in the late ’90s and early 2000s while starring in such films as The Faculty, Halloween: H20 and Black Hawk Down.

“I hope I’ve learned a lot since then,” he tells the magazine about the decades that have passed since he first hit the screen. “It was all just brand-new, very shiny and very interesting.” 

Still, he has no shame in being one of the “it boys” at the time. 

“I look back on it all fondly,” he says. “But I also see someone just trying to figure it out.” 

In June, Hartnett addressed the “heartthrob” title in an interview with Variety, where he said that the attention had an impact on his career. 

“It was never my intention to be a heartthrob,” he said at the time. “It had an effect on me, in which I had to fight against it. I really wanted to be a serious actor. What I didn’t understand is that I was in an amazing position, working with terrific directors on terrific projects. For all intents and purposes, it didn’t matter how people viewed me in tabloids or whatever — as long as I was working within the industry. But I was too young to really understand that, to make the differentiation.”

Today, Hartnett has made his quiet resurgence in film and TV as he has appeared in Oppenheimer, Black Mirror and as the star of  M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap. In the film, Hartnett plays a father (and serial killer) who takes his teenage daughter to see her favorite pop star in concert — and quickly realizes that it’s all a trap for police to catch him AKA, The Butcher. 

While speaking to ET at the film’s premiere in New York City last week, Hartnett says it’s a callback to the work he’s done before. 

“This is a thriller, like a sort of throwback style ’90s thriller that is looked at from the point of view of the antagonist,” he said. “… It was definitely a lot of fun to play this character. I wouldn’t want to play him every day. It’s more fun to always switch roles and try different things all the time. I’m always trying to subvert people’s expectations with the work that I’m doing. Hopefully, this will surprise you.”

Like his character, Hartnett took two of his four children — whom he shares with wife Tamsin Egerton — to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in London. After having the experience at the show, Hartnett revealed to ET that Shyamalan’s over-the-top directing of the concert film was accurate. 

“I’d never been to [an Eras Tour show] before we shot the film, so I thought that what M. Night was directing the kids to do was a little over the top,” Hartnett told ET. “It’s not. No, kids lose their mind — absolutely lost their minds.”

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