The entire preparation process helped Hayden develop his emotions for two key scenes in Attack of the Clones: The death of Anakin's mother Shmi (Pernilla August) and Anakin's confession to Padmé (Natalie Portman) on his reaction.
Talking about the powerful scenes which he shot with Pernilla August on the set for Attack of the Clones in Fox Studios, Australia, the actor says: "It's an environment that was not created for such emotional aspects. Although the Star Wars films always had this certain type of emotional quality to them, people didn't tend to go into the cinema every day, coming out sobbing and emotionally exhausted. I felt I had the chance to bring exactly this in."
But Christensen also comments that the confession scene with Natalie Portman was to him the most important turning point for his role.
"This scene was especially important to me. Up until this scene Anakin still has this childish, rejecting style to himself. He's got that sort of arrogance that a child has. So it was important to me to portray the moment in which he hits against his emotional and spiritual boundaries like how a child handles these emotions, which is to breakdown and cry. The fact that he breaks down and cries like an infant is very important to me because it's meant to show the great abyss and the great change between someone who breaks down and begs for help and someone who, in the future, reacts completely different to something like this. That's why I decided to play it like that. I put a lot of effort into this scene.