In the early 2000s, Josh Hartnett was the most in-demand actor in Hollywood, but he walked away from the spotlight and moved away to Surrey, England.
Now, the 43-year-old is opening up about the biggest casting regret of his career.
In 2005, the actor was offered a lead in an interesting modern western, but he had already committed to playing Dwight 'Bucky' Bleichert in the 2006 noir thriller, “The Black Dahlia."
“I was going to do ‘Brokeback Mountain,’” Josh told the Australian outlet, News.com.au. “And I had a contract with ‘Black Dahlia’ that I had to film, so I had to drop out of it.”
While "The Black Dahlia" is a stylish, underrated take on the story of the infamous L.A. murder, “Brokeback Mountain” was not only a much bigger, Oscar-nominated hit, but became a zeitgeist-capturing touchstone, bringing a seemingly destitute genre, the western, into a modern sensibility that tackled issues of homosexuality.
“It was a different film altogether,” said Harnett. “It was me and Joaquin Phoenix. But they went on to do it with Heath and Jake.”
Those eventual leads -- Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal -- were in their own zeitgeist moment at the time, being the buzziest actors in Hollywood. It’s interesting to imagine what kind of film might have transpired had Hartnett and Phoenix tackled the project instead.
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Along the way, Hartnett also turned down a three-picture deal as Superman and an offer from Christopher Nolan for Batman. But if you think not taking those roles in addition to passing on the role in “Brokeback Mountain” was Hartnett’s biggest regret, it wasn’t.
“I’ve always wanted to kiss Joaquin,” Hartnett joked. “So that’s my biggest regret.”
Hartnett did have blockbuster success with films like "Black Hawk Down," "the Virgin Suicides," and "Sin City," but near the end of the 2000s, he decided to leave Hollywood and move back to his home state of Minnesota.
It seemed the huge hype and disappointing box office of the 2001 blockbuster, “Pearl Harbor,” was the first project to really take a toll on Hartnett’s ambitions.
“At that point in my life," said Hartnett, "when I was so young and just trying to form my own personality, I just felt it was too much, honestly… I was happy to be going to work and making films, and coming home and hanging out with people who I knew cared about me, instead of, you know … hobnobbing.”
The actor also noted that social media was still in its nascent stage back then and didn’t allow for the kind of easy access and explanations that are now regularly afforded.
“Journalists were less kind to celebrities back then,” Hartnett said." There were no outlets like Twitter or Instagram to voice your own version of things … you were at the mercy of journalists really, unless you played that game very cleverly.”
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Since moving to England, Hartnett hasn't given up on acting entirely, but he has since concentrated on smaller indie films and TV work along the likes of "Penny Dreadful," "Drunk History," and "Paradise Lost".
He previously told TODAY: “I’m happy to be done with that era and to be making films that are more personal to me,” he said. “Directors are coming to me to play characters as opposed to versions of a hero I played in a movie once.”
His latest film, the crime drama “Ida Red,” is available for digital download.
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