And Hartnett definitely disliked it.
“Oh, that was an awful piece,” Hartnett, now a 42-year-old married father of 2 living in Surrey, England, just recently showed to The Guardian. “Was there even a quote from me in it, or was it just everyone talking about how hot I was? People got a chip on their shoulder about me after that. They genuinely thought I’d been thrust on them. It was a very weird time.”
Bristling at the lofty expectations it developed, he stated, “It’s simply that it took place at a time when I wasn’t that popular, and it appeared to currently be asking whether I must be or not. I seemed like: ‘Oh my God! I’m not the highest poppy yet—do not cut me down!’ I was being compared to Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts which’s crazy. It was a set-up-to-fail minute.”
Facing a fork in the roadway—take a stab at mega-fame and whatever that consists of or run, quick, in the opposite instructions—he chose the latter.
