JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
In the new movie "Verity," nobody is quite who they seem to be. That is true of the titular character, played by Anne Hathaway, a novelist whose books are so full of villainy, her readers can't help but wonder if she's a villain herself.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "VERITY")
ANNE HATHAWAY: (As Verity Crawford) The words should come directly from the center of the gut, tearing through flesh and bone as they break free - ugly and honest and bloody and a little bit terrifying but completely exposed.
SUMMERS: But Verity is catatonic after a car accident, and her husband, Jeremy, hires a young writer to help finish her series.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "VERITY")
JOSH HARTNETT: (As Jeremy Crawford) You would have to spend some time at the house. In her office, she has years of notes and outlines - stuff I wouldn't know how to make sense of. We live in Vermont. You can stay for as long as you need to.
SUMMERS: Jeremy is the very picture of a dutiful spouse, at least at first. Josh Hartnett plays Jeremy in the new movie, an adaptation of the popular Colleen Hoover novel. When we spoke, I started by asking him what drew him to the role.
HARTNETT: What I most responded to was the ambiguity of the ending. We want people to come out and debate after the film is over because, as Colleen Hoover - who wrote the book - intended, it was a sort of a Rorschach drawing of a book. You kind of see what you want to in these characters. Everybody is kind of under suspicion, and...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
HARTNETT: At the end, you hopefully will go out and talk about it. And I thought that was a really - that's brave. And at the same time, I was being asked to play this complicated but also romantic lead against these actors, and I haven't done that in a long time. So for me, it's always a - I like to find things that are new and surprising and will challenge me, and this was, in my opinion, kind of the biggest challenge that was in front of me at that time.
SUMMERS: You've made the case in other interviews that we shouldn't see Jeremy as a bad guy. Why?
HARTNETT: Well, you shouldn't see only Jeremy as a bad guy, I think, is what I would...
SUMMERS: OK.
HARTNETT: ...Probably say more than anything. All of these characters are very complicated, and all of them could be sort of architects of the worst elements of this story.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "VERITY")
DAKOTA JOHNSON: (As Lowen Ashleigh) And you have everything that anyone could ever want, that I want. And you don't deserve it.
HARTNETT: I wouldn't say that Jeremy doesn't do bad things.
SUMMERS: Sure.
HARTNETT: I think he does, but I think that he is not the only one doing bad things. And if you were to kind of tease it out and take a certain perspective, which I think is totally there in the movie, he's probably not doing the worst things.
SUMMERS: If we can, I just want to take a step back now because there was a time I remember in the late '90s, early 2000s, where you were sort of everywhere. There was "The Virgin Suicides," "The Faculty," "Pearl Harbor," "Black Hawk Down" - I could go on and on. And then you left LA. You turned down the role of Superman twice, and tabloids started to ask, where'd he go? And you didn't stop acting altogether, but it does seem, at least to me, like your priorities shifted. How so?
HARTNETT: I guess, after "Black Hawk Down," I took some time off because I really - it goes back to the fact that I never actually intended to become a famous actor. I was...
SUMMERS: Interesting to hear you say that.
HARTNETT: Yeah, but I mean, I was very young. I was 18 when I did my first film and was thinking of it as like, oh, wow, this is an interesting - what a crazy opportunity to have. I didn't think it was going to become a career. And then cut to four years later, just - not even four years later. It was, like, 3 1/2 years later. I've wrapped my - something like tenth film, and it was "Black Hawk Down," and I had "Pearl Harbor" coming out.
And it was - I was on the cover a lot of magazines, and I had a lot of paparazzi chasing me and was just sort of kind of thrown into the center of that world, and I didn't want to feel like I wasn't in any control of my own life. And so I ended up moving back home to Minnesota and just kind of had a much more, I think - a much less Hollywood existence.
And what that also sort of allowed me to do was to look at Hollywood through the perspective of someone who's not caught up in it, and I realized there is something I really love about this - making films, and it's to kind of challenge myself and find new filmmakers that I think are going to give me the same feeling I had when I was working on "Virgin Suicides" or on "The Faculty," where I'm working with these auteurs who are investigating the possibilities of their art, you know, not trying to create hits but trying to do something fresh.
And I wanted to look for independent films to work on that were going to kind of remind me of that and help me continue to explore my craft. And so I did that for quite a long time. And some of those films were successful, but most of them were kind of under the radar. And so everybody thinks that I disappeared, but really, I disappeared from their - you know, from their sight, but I was still obviously working on things that I thought were worthy.
SUMMERS: Josh, if I can, I want to read to you a quote. It's from a 2002 Guardian profile of you, and it's titled "Heartthrob," and they write this - meeting him is like going on a date with a boy you know is miles - continents out of your league - pointless and misery-inducing and thrilling all at the same time. And you were in your 20s when that came out. What is it like hearing that now, 20 years later, now that you're in your 40s?
HARTNETT: Wow. Well, I've never heard that quote. That's funny to me. It's not a - I don't know. I - when I was younger - and this is another reason I think that I needed to step away from the limelight, the center of Hollywood - was that I felt like I hadn't defined myself yet. And so there were lots of people that were kind of putting their definition of me out there into the world, and that was affecting my own idea of who I am. And I don't feel like that person anymore. So I have a pretty clear, clearly defined life now, and I am less afraid of other people's opinions.
But I find, at that time, if I would have heard that, I would have curled up into a ball, and I would have been - you know, I would have been so embarrassed by that. But at the same time, you know, in a way, you know, also thrilled that people cared, you know? Now I hear that, and I think it's funny. It's, like, from a time gone by. It's very strange.
SUMMERS: Yeah. Turning back to "Verity" for a moment, your role here, at least on the surface - it could fit in right with a lot of the early roles in your career - this sort of handsome brooding guy but who also has depth and, like, more going on behind the scenes. How do you see this movie fitting in with the types of roles that you like to play?
HARTNETT: Well, I think that it was - as I said before, I feel like it was an opportunity to do something that I haven't done in a long time but then also a chance to work with these people in this particular situation. It's been a long career, and I've been able to go on a lot of different paths over it, and I hope to continue to do that.
You know, I have the same manager as Anne Hathaway and have always wanted to work with her, and this is one that she was producing. And so I felt like I'd take it extra seriously. I mean, it's a wild film in the end. It's very - I don't know how to compare it to other things that I've done, but it is - it's definitely different.
SUMMERS: That was actor Josh Hartnett. His new film is "Verity." Josh, thanks so much.
HARTNETT: Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
