Pearl Harbor
PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii, May 18, 2001--Aside from the historical resonance and awesome special effects, Pearl Harbor gets you two hunks for the price of one. And if Ben Affleck is the smooth-talking, attention-grabbing lead singer of this operation, Josh Harnett is the brooding guitarist, the quiet guy whose mystery and aw-shucks awkwardness have an appeal all their own. In other words, he's a star in the making.
And he knows it. The gentle, polite Minnesota boy, whose major film debut was playing Jamie Lee Curtis's son in Halloween: H20, explains to Hollywood.com his fears about how a big film like Pearl Harbor will affect his daily life and the rigors of making war movies.

How's your day going?
Josh Hartnett: I was just talking about you over there. You guys are the Internet, you guys have to get your information straight so I can stop [correcting you].

Fire away.
Hartnett: OK. Here we go. I did not audition for Dawson's Creek six times or whatever. I live in St. Paul, I was born in St. Paul and I spent my whole life in St. Paul, basically. Went to school at Minneapolis South, not Richfield [High School]. I'm 22 years old, not 48 or whatever. There's a lot of other stuff, I just can't remember it right now.

And you're dating …
Hartnett: Nobody.

Are you shy with the ladies, the way your character is in the film?
Hartnett: Danny Walker's not me, by any means. I wanted Danny to be a fetal version of me, a newborn version of me. He's very innocent; very vulnerable, very sweet and idealistic. Had a lot of heartache in his life that led to that.

Tell us about the boot camp they put you through.
Hartnett: At the end of it, I wanted to hurt some authority figure really badly … They break you down; they try and make you realize you're absolutely nothing and worth nothing. And then they're supposed to build you back up. Unfortunately, we were only there five days, they didn't have time to build us back up, so we left feeling about as low as we possibly could.

Ben Affleck said it was much harder than what the Saving Private Ryan guys went through.
Hartnett: We did actual army ranger boot camp, at the army ranger training grounds. We had actual military guys mixed in with us, and these guys said this was the hardest four days they'd had in the military so far.

Why do you think actors even need to go to boot camp?
Hartnett: I earned a lot of respect for the military which allowed me to play this character without any sort of cynical edge, which really helped my character a lot. It gets injected into my consciousness by going there and then it's there--you can't get rid of that.

Talking to the many survivors of Pearl Harbor, what gave you the most emotional impact?
Hartnett: The thing that stuck in my mind most was that after 60 years, they still cried about it.

Do you have any personal connections to the war?
Hartnett: My great-uncle was in D-day. He lived through it all; I don't think anybody he knew at the beginning made it to the end. He wrote letters back the whole time. I read those letters while I was filming this movie. And my grandpa was the exact opposite. He was stationed in Italy and North Africa and pretty much played Ping-Pong the whole time.

We heard you weren't sure you wanted to do Pearl Harbor. Why was that?
Hartnett: I come from a very liberal background so I wasn't sure if I wanted to be in a war movie. But most of it was I wasn't sure I wanted to be famous on this kind of level. It seems kind of backward. I don't think it really helps your development as a person, but it helps doing the right films. I just eventually came to the decision to see how far I can ride this thing. I can always quit and fame can go away in no time. This was the thing that was scariest to me, so I wanted to prove I could do it.

You still live in St. Paul instead of Los Angeles or New York. Is that your way of keeping things realistic?
Hartnett: Yeah. I don't really want to get sucked up in the madness. I like it at home where my best friends and my family are.