Josh Hartnett is on a real roll right now.
The US actor is currently enjoying a wave of praise off the back of his work in the Netflix drama Below, having already appeared in the Emmy-winning series The Bear and the star-studded thriller Verity earlier this year.
And in the last few years alone, he’s added Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap and a particularly ambitious episode of Black Mirror to his vast filmography – which already included war epics, romantic comedies, comic book adaptations and period dramas.
But what about the roles he’s played over the years that might have passed you by?
Well, here are just seven of those films and TV shows you may well have forgotten that Josh once appeared in…
Cracker (1997
While still in his teens, Josh Hartnett made his professional acting debut in Cracker, an American remake of the British crime drama of the same name.
In the US version, Robert Pastorelli took on the role of Fitz, played in the original by Robbie Coltrane, while Josh played his son, Michael (in the British series, this character was named Mark, and played by Kieran O’Brien).
Cracker ran for just one season made up of 16 episodes, five of which eventually went unaired.
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
A year after his TV debut, Josh landed his first big-screen role with the sci-fi thriller The Faculty, before taking a venture into the slasher genre.
H20 marked the seventh instalment in the Halloween film series, revisiting the original case two decades on. The Below actor shared the screen with Jamie Lee Curtis as her on-screen son, John.
Josh later dismissed the idea of returning for any of the later reboots, insisting to HuffPost in 2017: “I’m pretty much always looking forward. That’s not something I would be looking to be a part of, but it’s not that I didn’t have a great time.”
Blow Dry (2001)
This British romantic comedy from the early 2000s has largely been forgotten, despite an impressive cast that includes Alan Rickman, Natasha Richardson, Bill Nighy and a rare acting performance from Heidi Klum.
If you do remember Blow Dry, it may well be because of Josh’s attempt at a Yorkshire droll, which made Anne Hathaway in One Day sound Emmerdale-ready and was described by The Guardian as “the worst British accent ever recorded on celluloid” upon its release.
Mozart And The Whale (2005)
By 2005, Josh had already had his international breakthrough in films like Pearl Harbor and Wicker Park.
The same year he appeared in Sin City, he also took a risk by appearing in the unconventional romantic comedy Mozart And The Whale, inspired by a man and woman with Asperger’s syndrome who fall in love, with Radha Mitchell starring as his love interest.
While the movie was fairly successful in charming critics at the time, it did also face some backlash for perpetuating tropes about people with autism.
Oh Lucy! (2017)
By this middle stage of his career, Josh was experimenting more with the kind of roles he said yes to, which led to him appearing in Oh Lucy!.
In the Atsuko Hirayanagi dramedy, Josh played an English teacher in Tokyo who is shocked to find that one of his students has followed him back to the UK in search of her cousin, who had come back with him only to disappear.
Oh Lucy! wound up winning over audiences but, even more so, critics, with ratings of 3.5 and an enviable 98% on Letterboxd and Rotten Tomatoes, respectively.
6 Below: Miracle On The Mountain (2017)
Based on the real story of Eric LeMarque, 6 Below starred Josh as a former hockey pro who finds himself stranded in the mountains after a snowstorm, and must rely on his wits to survive.
With a limited cast, Josh appears in much of the film on his own as he works his way through the wilderness, with its supporting cast including Mira Sorvino and Sarah Dumont.
Unfortunately, despite its leading man’s best efforts, 6 Below didn’t quite win over critics, with a lowly two stars in The Guardian while Variety branded it “The Revenant Lite”.
Operation Fortune (2023)
Josh’s acting renaissance really got going in the 2020s, but despite a stellar cast that included everyone from Hugh Grant and Aubrey Plaza to Jason Statham and even Friday Night Dinner’s Tom Rosenthal, we have to admit that this Guy Ritchie offering pretty much passed us by a couple of years ago.
The spy comedy centres around a secret agent tasked with rescuing a stolen high-tech device before it’s sold at an auction with potentially disastrous results.
Josh played the movie star Danny Francesco, who plays a significant part in the film’s central plot to distract the billionaire arms dealer responsible for the sale of the device.
