In a wide-ranging interview with Empire, Hayden Christensen has revealed his doubts that he’d win the function of Anakin Skywalker within the Star Wars prequel trilogy. He additionally talked of its backlash.
Christensen, now 42, was simply 19-years-old when he debuted as the long run Darth Vader in 2002’s Star Wars: Episode II – Assault of the Clones. His audition had come a 12 months earlier.
“I used to be 18, and I obtained a name from my agent saying that they had been casting for Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars and I believed, ‘Wow, how cool.’ But it surely simply appeared too massive,” Christensen mentioned.
“And I keep in mind asking my agent, ‘Is there perhaps one other function that they’re additionally casting proper now you could put me up for? As a result of Anakin form of appears unattainable.’ And there was not. So I threw my title within the hat like everybody else,” he mentioned.
It will need to have been an enormous hat, as reportedly 1,500 actors had been seen for the function, together with Leonardo DeCaprio.
“I had heard that they’d met with Leonardo and a bunch of different actors. That simply confirmed my thought that the function would go to a different actor,” he mentioned. “By way of the whole auditioning course of I had informed myself, from day one, that I wasn’t going to get the half. It simply wasn’t a chance. And I feel that most likely helped me quite a bit, as a result of it simply freed me up in lots of methods. And so it actually got here as a shock to me once I obtained the half,” he mentioned.
Earlier than Episode II, Christensen had appeared in only a handful of movies and guest-starring TV present roles.
“The scope of the chance — the enormity of all of it — was thrilling to me. It was clearly slightly daunting too, however there’s a saying: ‘Stress is privilege.’ I simply felt very fortunate to have it. I used to be actually thrilled that I used to be gonna get to precise George’s mapping out of how somebody goes from good to unhealthy,” he mentioned.
Christensen nonetheless needed to face the court docket of public opinion. Not all of it was sort.
“As a result of Star Wars has had the cultural impression that it has, these characters nearly develop into public area, the place folks really feel a way of possession over them. The character was criticized, my efficiency was criticized, and that half sucked,” he admitted.
“However I additionally felt like I had some context that maybe helped slightly bit. When Episode I got here out, there was lots of pleasure that they had been making a brand new Star Wars, and it was going to be the backstory of Darth Vader,” he mentioned.
“However I had mates that had been upset that the character was beginning off as this younger child. And I watched the movie, and I liked it. It was every thing I wished and extra. And I didn’t perceive the disconnect between the film that I noticed, and the negativity in among the critiques,” he mentioned.
“In a means, that form of criticism, I feel, comes from a sure failure of their very own suspension of disbelief. In the event you’re gonna go sit in a theatre, and the opening scroll begins with, ‘A very long time in the past, in a galaxy far, distant,’ that’s setting the stage that something is feasible,” he mentioned.
“These folks don’t must sound and behave the best way that we’d count on. And in the event you’re going to take a seat down and suppose that you just’re getting one thing that’s of our present zeitgeist, then you definitely’re setting your self up for one thing else,” he added.
