Hayden Christensen Uncomfortable With ‘Star Wars’ Fame; Opts For Challenge In Building Career
Did Hayden Christensen just blamed "Star Wars" for his hiatus from Hollywood?
Back in 2002, Hayden Christensen, just fresh-faced at 19 years old, was cast as Anakin Walker in the "Star Wars" prequels and found himself under the menacing glare of Hollywood and fame.
While he was thrust into the spotlight from out of nowhere-a position that countless among his peers at that time would kill for-Rachel Bilson's partner wasn't too comfortable about the whole thing.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, he said, "I guess I felt like I had this great thing in 'Star Wars' that provided all these opportunities and gave me a career, but it all kind of felt a little too handed to me."
"I didn't want to go through life feeling like I was just riding a wave," Hayden Christensen added.
Hayden Christensen is now back a decade after "Star Wars Episode III" in the film, "90 Minutes of Heaven," based on the novel by Cecil Murphy and Don Piper.
"Christensen, affecting a heavy Southern drawl, plays Piper, a minister who in 1989 was involved in a horrific car crash with a tractor-trailer that left him declared legally dead by the first responders," said The Hollywood Reporter. "His body was left under a tarp in his mangled car for 90 minutes, but before the medical examiner arrived, a pastor who happened by asked to pray over the dead man."
Don Piper later revealed that when he died, he went to heaven.
Hayden Christensen, for his part, developed a perspective after his hiatus following the "Star Wars" prequels.
"You can't take years off and not have it affect your career," Rachel Bilson's boyfriend added. "But I don't know - in a weird, sort of destructive way, there was something appealing about that to me. There was something in the back of my head that was like, 'If this time away is gonna be damaging to my career, then so be it."
"If I can come back afterward and claw my way back in, then maybe I'll feel like I earned it,'" he added.