Josh Hartnett was a Hollywood heartthrob. After starring in back-to-back hits Black Hawk Down and Pearl Harbor (in the same year), the actor was pegged as the next big star. Offers to play superheroes came in, but the actor, in an interesting move, turned his back on all of them, choosing instead to appear in smaller films over the next decade.
In fact, he became intrinsically linked to Hollywood infamy after it was reported that he turned down offers to play Superman, Batman and Spider-Man. But it’s a little more complicated than that.
In an interview to Variety earlier this year, Hartnett said that the only outright offer he received was for Superman Returns, directed by Brian Singer and eventually starring Brandon Routh. While he met with Christopher Nolan, he wasn’t offered technically offered the role of Batman in Batman Begins. Christian Bale was eventually cast. As for Spider-Man, Hartnett said that it was fake news.
“I didn’t turn down Spider-Man. I don’t know where that came from,” he said. “I’d only turned down Superman as a straight-up offer. But I was, at that time of my career, where a lot of people were asking me to do those types of movies. I was having meetings with those directors and people were saying: ‘Would you be interested?’ I talked to them about what they were doing and I ultimately decided I wasn’t, but that was a very privileged place for a young man to be in. I’m a little bit outside of the box and had the leverage to do that, and that’s the direction I chose.”
He stated unequivocally that he wasn’t offered Batman. “No, Batman wasn’t an audition or an offer. It was a conversation with the director [Christopher Nolan]. I think there’s a lot of misinformation out there. When you say one thing one time about it, and now it gets blown up. But I don’t really care to tell that story over and over again.”