  Continuing his streak of anti-blockbusters, Josh Hartnett stars alongside Samuel L. Jackson in the made-in-Calgary Resurrecting the Champ.
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BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Josh Hartnett is used to enduring jabs, on and off screen.
"There was a point where I was on the cover of a bunch of magazines and I was going into auditions trying to convince these directors I was a real actor and not just a magazine cover boy," says the tall, scruffy 29-year-old, who boxed in The Black Dahlia and watched Pearl Harbor and Hollywood Homicide get KOed by critics.
FIGHTING FOR ROLES
"I had to change my whole perspective and fight for smaller roles and turn down the bigger ones. It's odd when you're doing that, but it's worth it, I think -- I hope -- in the long run."
And he knows enough to take his work, but not himself, seriously. For example, while explaining an esoteric film he just shot in Hong Kong -- "I barely have any lines at all" -- he stops himself, aware he's coming dangerously close to making eyes roll, and sheepishly admits, "It sounds wanky, but it's a good movie."
If only more actors knew when they were sounding wanky.
As it is, this glimmer of self-awareness makes Hartnett's earnestness and ambition -- which have resulted in terribly mixed results -- tolerable. Besides, he's earned some leeway. This is the guy who turned down $100 million US to play Superman, after all.
This Friday he continues his streak of decidedly anti-blockbusters -- Wicker Park, Lucky Number Slevin, Sin City and Black Dahlia, among them -- with the made-in-Calgary Resurrecting the Champ.
In it, he stars as a struggling sports reporter who stumbles upon a career-making story when he discovers a homeless vagrant (Samuel L. Jackson) was once a famed prize-fighter.
"Josh isn't just given these roles with depth and maturity and the times he is, it's in very small movies like Mozart and the Whale," says director Rod Lurie.
"Here he plays ordinary man with ordinary flaws. It's difficult when these gorgeous movie stars say, 'Oh poor me,' but he pulls it off."
Echoes Jackson, "There's a great facility inside of Josh to do a lot of stuff."
MISSED OPPORTUNITIES
In an interview, Hartnett is deliberate and thoughtful and weighs his answers carefully. He is similarly meticulous, he says, about his performances.
"I always feel the same about my work -- I just see the missed opportunities. My dad used to play music and he used to say it takes 10 years to listen to something he had recorded with the right kind of ears -- when you can actually appreciate it. Because (before then) all the things you're listening to are the things you didn't do and couldn't pull off ... You're never quite satisfied with what you've done."
Still, he is pleased, he says, with the variety of roles that now come his way. He next stars in October's supernatural thriller 30 Days of Night as "a bad-ass sheriff" defending a remote Alaskan town from a horde of vampires. After that, he'll appear as a "money-loving kind of complete a--hole" in the film August. And there is that wanky Hong Kong flick too.
The question, it turns out, which stumps him most -- aside from what his thoughts are about the erroneous rumour that his ex-girlfriend Scarlett Johansson wants to play porn queen Jenna Jameson -- is what role he covets most.
"I would like to play everything," he says finally.
"And I'm naive enough to think that I can."
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