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‘I didn’t want to be swallowed up’: actor Josh Hartnett on swapping Hollywood for Hampshire

On track for megastardom, the actor turned down the part of Superman (twice) and turned his back on Hollywood. Now living in rural Hampshire, he talks about choosing fulfilling projects, his hippie childhood, the perils of stalkers – and the fun of owning pygmy goats

Films like Mozart and the Whale(2005), a love story about two people with Asperger’s, or Resurrecting the Champ(2007), about a journalist who discovers a former heavyweight boxer living on the streets, or even The Black Dahlia(2006), a highly anticipated James Ellroy adaptation. Last year alone saw him steal the show with a gloriously funny turn as a clueless Hollywood actor in an otherwise so-so Guy Ritchie film ( Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre), followed by an astronaut in a metaphysical love triangle in a standout episode of Black Mirror(“Beyond the Sea”), followed by a key role as a nuclear physicist in the Oscar-sweeping smash Oppenheimer. It was also a role that didn’t take long to shoot – a fraction of his 180-day allowance – then back to the Hampshire countryside and his wife, his four young children, his dog, his chickens, his guinea pigs, and several, diaper-free, pygmy goats.

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