Homebody Hayden Plays 'House'
By NANCY MILLS
Special to the Daily News
HOLLYWOOD If an actor's roles reflected his character, Hayden Christensen might be in reform school — or jail.
In last year's Fox Family Channel series "Higher Ground," he played a troubled teen recovering from a drug habit.
In Irwin Winkler's "Life as a House," opening Friday, he is a troubled teen with a drug habit.
And in the next two "Star Wars" movies, he will be Anakin Skywalker, the Jedi knight with a bully habit: He grows up to be Darth Vader.
In person, there's no sign of anything dark or brooding in this slender, 20-year-old 6-footer, who still lives with his parents in Toronto and does chores around the house.
Hayden Christensen will play a young Darth Vader in the next two 'Star Wars' movies. "Maybe it was my desire to portray something dark," Christensen speculates about why he excels at playing bad boys. "In trying to discover myself as an actor, I try to do whatever's the farthest from what I know is myself. I've always thought of myself as a good guy."
In the new movie, Christensen's Sam is a product of a broken home who, without parental guidance, has turned to drugs to numb the pain of the abandonment by his father (Kevin Kline).
"It was hard to relate, especially coming from a situation that's the polar opposite," Christensen says. "I grew up in a good family environment, and I'm friends with my parents [a software designer and a writer who operate a home business together]. I never went through the rebelling thing."
Winkler says 100 actors were auditioned before he and "Star Wars" creator George Lucas settled on Christensen. As an example of what he says are Christensen's great actor instincts, Winkler cites the scene in which Sam, after learning that his father is dying, begins punching a wall.
"Hayden didn't tell me he was going to do that, or maybe he didn't know himself," Winkler says. "Otherwise, we would have padded the wall. He almost broke his knuckles."
From Court to Stage
The third of four children, Christensen was a nationally ranked tennis player who hoped to go to college on an athletic scholarship until acting took over his life. It started as a hobby when he was 7. For lack of a baby-sitter, he accompanied his older sister to an audition and was asked if he, too, wanted to make commercials.
"For the first five years, it wasn't something I gave much thought to," he says of his early performing. "I didn't discover I enjoyed the process of acting until I was in high school. There's a pretty strong self-discovery aspect to acting, and at that time of my life I was trying to figure out who I was."
Perhaps that struggle is why he was selected as Anakin Skywalker. Christensen has his own ideas on the subject.
"It's such an archetypal role," the young actor says. "If you throw a celebrity into it, you're going to see so-and-so playing Anakin Skywalker. It was important for George [Lucas] to avoid that, so I think that's one of the reasons he cast me. I was a nobody."
Another may have been his reported chemistry with Natalie Portman, who plays Queen Amidala, the woman Anakin will marry. Christensen will say little about "Star Wars: Episode 2 — Attack of the Clones," but he does note, "Our characters are madly in love."
Christensen takes over the role from "Phantom Menace's" then-9-year-old Jake Lloyd, and his performance will segue into the Darth Vader we all know and loathe.
"'Star Wars' was very challenging because the lines were so defined," Christensen says. "I was stepping into something that pre-existed. But I do get to explore and create the transformation from someone who was so innately good to someone that we know is the most evil, darkest warlord in the universe. To do that over the course of two films seemed thrilling.
"Plus, I got to wield the light saber."