Pearl Harbor, O star unfazed by all the adulation aimed his way

HOLLYWOOD -- You can take the boy out of the country but, in Josh Hartnett's case, not for very long. And you certainly can't take the country out of this Minnesota boy.

The lanky 6-foot-3, dressed-down, no-pretentions actor comes strolling into the interview room looking more like a tradesman than the rising movie star who is featured as the villain in the film O. The new high school version of Shakespeare's Othello opens in Toronto tomorrow after a long, contentious delay in its planned release. Polite and humble, Hartnett pulls off his dilapidated ball cap and squeezes it back into shape before dumping it on the table.


The cap is filthy, well enough worn that it has holes in the webbing and it advertises a cigarette brand. Turns out "a buddy" back in Minneapolis, where Hartnett grew up after being born in San Francisco, gave it to him for his 23rd birthday back on July 21. The hat has sentimental value.

"He's had it for 10 years," Hartnett explains. "It's the coolest hat. He said: 'You hold it for a few years and then give it to someone else.' But I can't wear it around very much because it's a (cigarette brand) hat and I don't want to support the tobacco companies."

The anecdote is a perfect illustration of Hartnett's eccentric yet likable character. As celebrity beckons, primarily because he had a major role with Ben Affleck in the Hollywood blockbuster Pearl Harbor, Hartnett looks for ways to soften the blow, escape the insanity.

Take the case of Pearl Harbor: "Just by chance -- not really by chance, it was kind of by design -- I was shooting a movie in Africa when Pearl Harbor came out, so we went through the press (in Hawaii) and I took off back to Africa where I was in Morocco and I could walk down the street and I was just that white guy. So I missed a lot of the hype the first month-and-a-half it was out. And the last month-and-a-half I've been in Minnesota and I've been putting together a house so I haven't been out all that much."

Celebrity means little. "You know, I don't see that much of it. The only time I see it is when I come back here and that's okay, I guess, because I don't come back very long."

He's in Hollywood today to talk about O, in which he plays the villainous Hugo, the high school equivalent of Iago in the play Othello. Don't think that being a Minneapolis country boy means that Hartnett doesn't know his Shakespeare, even if he's not the academic type.

"Iago is one of the best characters in Shakespeare," he says, adding that the character of Hugo was made less evil but more motivated so that youngsters could relate to him now. In Hugo's case, he is in angst because he yearns for the love of his father, who would rather deflect that passion towards the star basketball player on his school team. In this case that's Odim (played by Mekhi Phifer), the equivalent to the Othello character. Julia Stiles plays the young woman caught between them as the tragic plot unfolds.

Playing Hugo took a toll on Hartnett, who freely calls himself an intensely emotional guy. "This was one that beat me down the most, because having to find jealousy and envy within yourself and then to magnify it ... (he searches for words, seeming to choke up, but you get the picture).

"After this movie, I did an admittedly not great film called Here On Earth. But the character was a sweet, sweet guy and it really helped me get out of this. It was tough."

The country boy has a deep wellspring of feeling.