Josh Hartnett - Why I Turned Down Superman To Do Indie Films

https://www.datalounge.com/thread/25321620-josh-hartnett-why-i-turned-down-superman-to-do-indie-films

He splits his time between London and America as he says he deliberately dropped out of Hollywood to focus on doing Indie Films - he explains why he turned down three big budgeted movie franchises

Question - I saw an interview that you did a few years ago where you talked about turning down three big roles: Spider-Man (later played by Tobey Maguire), Batman (Christian Bale) and Superman (Brandon Routh). But I was a little confused by what happened. Had you actually auditioned for all three of those roles? Or did you just not want to be considered for them?

Hartnett - I didn’t turn down Spider-Man. I don’t know where that came from. I’d only turned down Superman as a straight-up offer. But I was, at that time of my career, where a lot of people were asking me to do those types of movies. I was having meetings with those directors and people were saying: “Would you be interested?” I talked to them about what they were doing and I ultimately decided I wasn’t, but that was a very privileged place for a young man to be in. I’m a little bit outside of the box and had the leverage to do that, and that’s the direction I chose.

Question - Did you ever audition to play Batman or was that an offer?

Hartnett - No, Batman wasn’t an audition or an offer. It was a conversation with the director [Christopher Nolan]. I think there’s a lot of misinformation out there. When you say one thing one time about it, and now it gets blown up. But I don’t really care to tell that story over and over again.

Question - I remember when “Pearl Harbor” came out, and the craziness around it — the magazine covers and the spotlight on you. Does that feel like that was from a whole other lifetime?

Hartnett - Do you know what’s funny? It felt removed from how my life was then. All those magazine covers and paparazzi and all that sort of stuff was not at all how I lived my life, and not at all who I thought myself to be. So I feel very much myself now, and I took steps to make my life not as crazy after that movie came out and was successful at it and have remained sort of outside of the fray. When I was younger, it was important to me to kind of figure out who I was, what I wanted for my life, how I wanted to create my life without so much scrutiny. I did that, and now I feel comfortable being who I am in the spotlight if I need to be.

Question - What steps did you take?

Hartnett - Both steps to be a more creative actor and not feeling like I’m giving everything away to everyone all of the time in the press. I just took steps back at that time and have subsequently taken a lot of steps forward in a lot of different directions, and I think I feel much more comfortable being this type of actor that is able to take on a ton of different types of roles.