| Vanity Fair |
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| Hartnett, who is rumored to be getting $2 million for the role, and who may soon be known as the John Wayne of U.S. military debacle, plays the staff sergeant whose men number among the battle's first casualities. His co-stars include Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, and Jason Isaacs. On this sunny, temperate monring, they and 50 or so of their fellow cast members - a young, spirited group that includes Americans, Britons, Australians, Frenchmen, and at least one Dane - have gathered at one of the production's locations to rehearse some of the military manueuvers they will have to execute on film. The coastal city of Salé, which sits across an estuary from the Moroccan capital, Rabat, and which appears to have somewhat the same relationship to its sister municipality that Newark does to New York, is filling in for Mogadishu. It is a depressed-looking city of squalid markets, crumbling, low-rise concrete apartment buildings, and litter. Even the boho Lonely Planet guide dismisses it as "pretty grubby and worn out". Four blocks have been cordoned off. As small crowds of Moroccan boys and men watch from the barriers, and neighbourhood dogs roam the set barking at nothing in particular, the actors, all dressed in fatigues, dash about with plastic rifles pretending to "secure a perimeter". Others, including Hartnett, are jumping off the fourth-floor landing of an unfinished cinder-block apartment building, grabbing onto a thick nylon rope (which hangs from rigging suspended between two open floors), and then slithering to earth as if sliding down a wobbly fire pole. This last exercise doesn't look entirely safe; you'd think the limbs and spinal columns of million-dollar movie stars would rate more protection that the couple of thin mats placed on the ground below. But all this playing armyman seems designed, in part, to foster old-fashioned and military esprit. Techinal advisers - ex-soldiers and Navy Seals - put the actors through their boot-camp threats along the lines of "From now on, you're eating shit together," and "You're in a shitstorm of trouble," and "I'm going to put you in a world of shit." "We're on top of the world," Hartnett yells in response, the faux exhilaration in his voice indicating that this is to be taken ironically. But with Pearl Harbor's release still month's away, and the actor free to enjoy the promise of fame with the little "downside" (he's been in the country for five days and has been recognized only once, he says, but "a couple of French girls") - not to mention the fact that he's now working with a director who, in the wake of Gladiator and Hannibal, is probably second only to Steven Spielberg on the A-lists - Hartnett is on the top of the world. It must at least feel that way. "Then I'm going to put you 'on top' of a world of shit," says the technical advisor, returning the discussion to excrement while inadvertantly offering a nifty definition of fame. This is the topography Hartnett will soon have to navigate. Already he seems to be adjusting to the subtle pecking order that inflects the camaraderie on the Black Hawk Down set. As rehearsals end, a couple of other actors hitch a ride back to the Rabat Hilton with Josh, his car, and his driver; almost everyone else is ferried to and fro in vans. (The hotel's lobby these days presents a curious mix of Japanese businessmen and what looks to be a bivouacing platoon of unusually photogenic soldiers.) En route, the conversation turns to the possibility of a Screen Actors Guild strike, a serious checkbook issue for many performers, and then the question of whether working continuously is bad from a purely creative standpoint. "I want to keep big gaps between projects," says Hartnett, who, it appears, is already thinking about rationing himself. There's a brief moment of silence in the car as everyone drinks this in, including Josh. He looks out the window. "Of course," he adds, a little chagrined, "I'm grateful to be in that position." "He wants to be a star, like anbody would, but he also recongizes that there's something detaching and something potentially very destructive about that," says Michael Lehmann, the director of 40 Days and 40 Nights, a comedy about a man who gives up sex for Lent which Hartnett finished filming immediately after finishing Pearl Harbor which will be released this fall. "There's a genuine streak in Josh that's ambivalent about fame," says the film's producer, Michael London. "He wants it, he can sort of taste it, he's just trying to figure out if there's a way to have it on his own terms. He's still figuring out who he is and what it's all about. It's just - he's young. It's true. "You really gotta know your shit," Hartnett says, of working with Ridly Scott, then quickly adds, "I'm swearing a lot - my grandma's gonna kill me." Certainly you wouldn't expect to hear that out of Mickey Rourke's mouth. Hartnett smokes a little, but his main actorly affectation is a Michael Nesmith-style wool cap he wears everywhere and which makes him look even younger than he is - a freshman at Bard, say, on his first visit to the Village. Other than that, he seems unusually comfortable in his own skin for someone of his age and profession. He's from Minnesota, people say by way of explanation. Colleagues portray an actor who is dedicated, scrupulous, unfailingly polite, and occasionally stubborn (in a good way, they insist). Searching for insight into his Virgin Suicides character he sought out not only the screenwriter - that would have already been way beyond the call of duty - but the novelist on whose book the film was based. "It was clear he had given a lot of thought to the part," says the author, Jeffrey Eugenides, who met Hartnett in a bar while the film was being shot in Toronto. "He wasn't taking the thing lightly, and it was gratifying to have one of the actors invest me with the kind of importance, well, the kind of importance writers of novels wish to have over films of their novels. Josh's concentration was also impressive in light of two dozen or so women who were trying to get his attention while we were talking. "He's earth-shatteringly handome in a slightly surprised way - he can't quite believe when everyone is falling over him and teasing him about being so good-looking," says Kate Beckinsale. During the filming of Pearl Harbor, she often brought her one-year old daughter, Lily, to the set; for one of those arbitrary reasons known only to toddlers, Hartnett's presence upset her. "We all used to tease him that it was because he was so handsome and she couldn't handle it. He worked on her, though, and she caved in the end. I think they all do." (On that score, Hartnett has reportedly dated, among others, the model Gisele Bundchen and the actress Monet Mazur.) By most accounts, including his own, he doesn't part much. To the extent that he lives anywhere - he's basically been moving from one location to another over the past four years, and his posessions are in storage - he beds down in his "hippie-ish" parents' house in St. Paul, Minnesota. (Dad was a guitar player for Al Green before taking over a family real-estate business.) To date, Josh's big movie-star splurge has been buying a not particularly sexy Audi A4. "I was going to get a Volkswagon and i saw the Audi and I said, 'What's this money for?" The car he says he really covets is an even less sexy Toyota Land Cruiser: "It's just this big box on wheels. It looks like a really big, wedgy mail truck." And that attracts him? "It's just a cool truck. And it's got so much power to it I could drag my house along if I really ever wanted to get a house." |