"Hayden Christensen Is Not Darth Vader."
He's not just "the Star Wars guy". And he'll tell you that straight to your face. Instead, this breathlessly natural 20-year-old Toronto ingenu, a one-time kiddie commercials king and bit-part TV player, is doing his best to downplay his central role in this summer's Star Wars flick and inform the world that he is fundamentally, an Actor. He does this, most conspicuously, by inhaling nitrous oxide and maturbating, while slowly strangling himself with a karate belt in the compulsively ghoulish opening scene of truculent-teen-bonds-with-dying-father-flick 'Life As A House'. Elsewhere, he also does a nice line in surly junkie turns, has been compared to James Dean, Marlon Brando and Robert DeNiro, and is currently tearing up the London stage as an amoral Eighties brat in 'This Is Our Youth'. And yet still, you look at him, and you can't help but notice the black leather jump suit, the breathing problems, and the shiny helmet.
Hayden Christensen is Darth Vader. Fact. He has breezily stolen the most iconic role in modern moviedom out from under the noses of fellow contestants Leonardo DiCaprio, Ryan Phillippe and Colin (son of Tom) Hanks. It's not something you shake off easily. He is suddenly the mythic centerpiece of an incomprehensibly popular six-movie space saga. And he knows how to work it. In Star Wars Episide II: Attack Of The Clones, he injects a sinister leer into the adolescent gaze of the pre-fall Vader, aka Anakin Skywalker. When his posh intergalactic paramour Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman) blushes, "Please don't look at me like that, it makes me uncomfortable", Christensen gives her a truly spine-chilling serial killer glare, while adding coldly, "Sorry, m'lady." He calls his particular technique "giving flashes of darkness", while adding that "you have to give flashes of innocence as well".
Unfortunately for Christensen, Star Wars isn't only about flashing. It's about an immeasurably powerful international branding phenomenon. It's about burger, posters, video games and action figures. At its best, it's a movie, but at its worst Star Wars is a ruthlessly efficient automated process of reification, one where human beings (actors) are permanently transformed into basic saleable commodities (Mark Hamill IS a Luke Skywalker lunchbox, Ray Park IS a Darth Maul bed spread). "It's a little scary," Christensen confesses, "I'll be drinking a Pepsi out of a can that will have my face on it. That's not really why I signed up to do Star Wars."
He knows all about selling commodities though. His first screen appearance, aged seven, was in a cough syrup commercial. The son of two "communications specialists" who named him after the gruff character actor Sterling Hayden, Christensen accompanied his older sister, Hejsa, to a Pringles commercial audition where he unexpectedly landed himself an agent and a slew of ad work, starting with Triaminic Cough Syrup. At 12 he eventually segued into drama, playing Skip McDeere in Canadian soap opera Family Passions. He bashed out bit-parts in TV movies, studied acting at Manhattan's prestigious Lee Strasberg Theater Institute, was spotted hiding behind Josh Hartnett in the "homecoming dance" sequence of The Virgin Suicides, and finally transformed himself into a sexually abused junkie for Fox TC series Higher Ground. It was then that he got "the call".
"It was pretty surreal," Christensen says of the constant shuttling back and forth between his Vancouver set and George Lucas HQ in San Francisco, meeting casting directors, talking with Lucas and doing a final smouldering screen test with co-star Portman. And, yes, he admits, there was "an inexplicable chemistry between us", but no, they're not "dating". Lucas fell for him straight away and proudly declared that "He's got a real edge to him. He's one of these brooding young Turks in the Marlon Brando/James Dean mold." (He would later announce that Christensen was the best young actor he had worked with since Harrison Ford -- sorry, Ewan.)
Christensen got the gig, and everything changed. "A lot of me was saying, 'Maybe this is too quick', but at the same time it was not a role I was going to pass on or be willing to give up." He spent the rest of summer 2000 in Australia, Tunisia and Italy capturing The Force on film. He admits that starring in Lucas's notoriously computerised franchise meant that a mere 10 percent of performance time is spent away from the dreaded blue screen. But perhaps learning from the past mistakes of others (Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson were both openly critical about "performing" in The Phantom Menace) and intrinsically fearing the wrath of the mightly Lucas, he optimistically analogises this process to theater acting, one where you "don't have any real sets or real stimuli to be affected by, so it demands a lot of your imagination".
Naturally, Christensen isn't the only one who fears the wrath of Lucas. The Bearded One has been typically strident when it comes to protecting the sanctity of Episode II. When pushed to reveal even the slightest piece of narrative marginalia, all cast members simply shrink nervously back and say, "Hey, I want to be in Episode III, you know." Similarly the mightly Lucasfilm Corporation have been imperiously demanding the removal of script leans from any rebel internet sites who've dared to post them.
Consequently, the story of Episode II exists only on the web pages of a few (usually deluded) fanboys with internet handles like "wampamaster" and "jedimindtrick." They talk of an evil Count Dooku, played by Christopher Lee, who has apparently orchestrated na attempt on Princess Amidala's life. They mention the fact that Anakin and Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) are hired as bodyguards to escort her safely to the Galactic Senate, and along the way Anakin and Amidala fall in love. After that, the precis normally falls apart with tentative descriptions of warrior Jango Fett, father to future scene-stealer Boba Fett, re-invasions of planet Naboo and a giant climactic battle incolving, er, clones. George Lucas: 1, Fans who paid for his vast array of plaid shirts: 0. The irony, of course, is that the same daconian security was applied to the oft-speculated script of The Phantom Menace. And look what they were hiding there.
Bolting straight out of Episode II, Christensen ran into the arms of bona fide drama, 'Life As A House'. The movie stars Kevin Kline as a dying father who decides to spend his last summer building a dream-house/metaphor with his adolescent, pill-popping, sexually ambiguous, autoerotic-asphyxiation-obsessed son, Sam (Christense). "It was nice to be able to do a serious movie, where the critics could see me give a totally different performance before Star Wars," Christensen says, of the role that saw him, in true Method stylem lose 25 pouds, wear mascara, eye shadow and a chin stud, and fracture his finger when punching a wall for a picotal temper scene. The role was a standout, and for his efforts he was, appropriately enough, nominated for a Golden Globe award. Co-star Kline calls him, "brilliant, with a natural actor's intelligence", while director Irvin Winkler was so impressed that he announced, "He's the kind of really instinctive actor I haven't seen a lot of since I first saw Bob DeNiro in the early Seventies." And still, Christensen has to be thinking, "See, I'm more than Darth Vader. I'm not just a poster. I am an actor!"
Subtly testing his DeNiro-esque kudos on the London stage, Christensen is currently playing opposite Anna (X-Men) Paquin in Kenneth Lonergan's 'This Is Our Youth'. Again, he's gone heavily anti-Star Wars with a tale of drug dealing, cussing and stealing amongst a group of a moral slackers from the writer and director of 'You Can Count On Me'. And then there's the possibility of a starring role in the Oliver Stone-directed Vietname drama (another one!) The Hunted. Apparently Stone wants him and has sent word. But so far that's just a rumor, and Christensen's happy for it to stay that way. Of course, once all the Episode II hoopla dies, and Hayden Christensen is still doggedly displaying his credibility, there's a certain matter of Star Wars: Episode III -- The One Where It Goes Bad waiting in the wings -- what happens next onscreen "is not really a mystery. Everyone knows I'm going to the dark side. It's kind of like the Titanic sinking." Yet it's offscreen that the real battle begins.
Star Wars can be a cruel and unforgiving machine. Just ask Phantom Menace's Anakin actor, squeaky little Jake Lloyd: has anyone actually seen Madison, his subsequent emotionally rousing "hydro-plane" drama co-starring Bruce Dern? Similarly, just watch Mark Hamill's performance as the sabre-wielding "cock-knocker" in Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back -- still haunted by Star Wars and still, sadly, crap. Even the infallible Lucas agrees: "Starring in a Star Wars film doesn't ensure that you get a career out of it. It takes a lot of movies and a lot of different characters to establish yourself." But for Hayden Christensen, the path to the future free of a cock-knocker commodification and "Star Wars guy" references can be boiled down to one simple mantra: Keep it interesting. Keep it up. And keep masturbating on camera.