For Hayden Christensen, Rome was probably not a bad place to be last month. Surrounded by millions of papal devotees, patriotic Poles and Dan Brown tourists, he couldn’t have picked a better spot for anonymity. “I can’t walk into the stores and see all the product placement on the bags of crisps,” he says. For the 24-year-old Canadian, public recognition has never been that bothersome — but, as it did three years ago, his world is about to go bonkers again. Yes, it’s Star Wars time.
Tall, slender and androgynous-looking, Christensen has an articulacy that belies his years. He is in Italy shooting The Decameron. Based on Boccaccio’s stories, it is a comedy about Florentine youths carousing in the face of the spectre of plague, and co-stars that unlikely medieval damsel Mischa Barton of The OC (with an appearance by our own David Walliams). But Christensen will still be whisked hither and thither to thump the tub for George Lucas.
Is there anybody out there who doesn’t know about the second cycle of Lucas’s space opera? Perhaps we should be encouraged by the title of this new effort, the third (but sixth to appear) in the canon. After the rather lame handles of The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, the far more robust Revenge of the Sith suggests there are big cans of whup-ass to be opened. It is the instalment that ties together all the loose ends, bringing the whole thing full cycle to the 1977 original. And aside from the obvious emotional factor of it being the last Star Wars film, it is, notably, the one that reaches its climax with Christensen’s Anakin Skywalker kitting up in black and asking his friends to start calling him Darth. It’s one hell of an iconic figure to be playing.
“It was a sensation I’d never felt before, and an indescrib-able one, in a way — very empowering,” muses Christensen. “Aside from being just Darth Vader, there’s something about being completely enclosed in some other sort of facade. It was liberating as an actor — not that I got to do much acting stuff. It was just ‘Move here and look sort of menacing’, which is not difficult with that mask and the presence of it all.” Has he heard of our own Dave Prowse, I wonder? (He has, of course.) When Lucas was shooting the original Star Wars as a low-budget caper, it was Britain’s champion weightlifter who suited up as the Mk I lord of darkness. But his delightful West Country burr was deemed uncosmic, so the stentorian tones of James Earl Jones were dubbed over instead. “I’d be curious to know how he feels about me taking over from him in this last one,” Christensen chuckles. He is unsure yet whether they are going to digitise his voice, or even get Jones back in again. The reason is that he hasn’t yet seen the finished film.
Not viewing Star Wars is an occupational hazard for anyone involved. Advance footage, stills, literature — everything has always been tightly regulated by command central. To the cynics, it smacks of protectionism, guarding against bad word of mouth. Alternatively, it’s just part of the hype. More likely — so obsessed are they with digital jiggery-pokery — is that Lucas and his beardie cohorts are still tweaking it as we speak. Some of the cast, including Ewan McGregor, have grumbled about all this acting against a green screen. (“They mix it up just to keep you sane — they throw a blue screen in every now and again,” says Christensen.) But this actor is more diplomatic than his chum.
“If you can sort of understand that you’re a part of what really is a digital film, it’s not so disturbing.” He does, though, describe one pivotal scene he has with Yoda. “I’m acting opposite this puppet perched on a blue box, and you have an assistant director reading Yoda’s lines. It’s not an ideal environment to do your best work.”
Did he see McGregor’s motorbiking documentary or read about his adventures across Russia? “Didn’t have to. I mean, I heard all about them,” he laughs. They are big pals. “He got me hooked on motorbikes,” he adds. Christensen won’t ride street bikes, he says, “because I’m not that brave”, but he will now happily hop on a dirt bike at any opportunity. Outside the hotel, on Piazza della Repubblica, the occasional crunch of Fiat panelling lends an appropriate chorus.
According to legend, it is Christensen’s duel with McGregor that will prove key to this film. The big lightsabre showdown between Obi-Wan Kenobi and the sorcerer’s apprentice marks the moment at which the maimed Anakin crawls off to be bionically reconstituted as Mr Vader, D. “Gruesome stuff,” says Christensen. “It’s all set in what George refers to as ‘hell’ — volcanoes and this huge sea of lava — and Anakin sort of gets the short end of the stick in the fight.” Not half.
Word is that tangling with his Jedi master costs Anakin, quite literally, an arm and a leg. “Or a couple,” smirks Christensen. Unsure as to how much he can elaborate, he checks himself.
I ask him whether this self-censorship is a bit bothersome. Given that this marks the end of his involvement with Star Wars, he loosens up a bit. There was a spot of bother a while back with some bootleg monitor footage leaking out. “George just assigned this plethora of nondisclosure agreements,” he gripes. “The whole thing has an air of such secrecy but, in a way, it seems like they sort of invite trouble themselves.” Word has it that the fight scene has resulted in the film being given a PG-13 rating in the United States, the first time Lucas will be unable to court the youngest common denominator. “It’s emotionally charged as well. I mean, Anakin and Obi-Wan are brothers, in a sense,” adds Christensen, back on message. “Aside from just watching a cool fight, you’re emotionally invested.”
As a sideshow to all of the above, Anakin finds time to sire a couple of munchkins (Luke and Leia) with Senator Amidala/Padmé Naberrie-Skywalker. (In Star Wars, everyone has a dual personality — twice the merchandising opportunity per character.) Has he seen Natalie Portman in Closer? I do declare a saucy grin is suppressed. “Yeah. I was surprised, actually.” He smirks. And then, solemnly: “She’s a very talented actress.”
It seems quite evident that the minute their Star Wars duties have been discharged, the actors involved have gleefully scurried off into grungy independent films as a refreshing change (or antidote) to this great galactic behemoth. After Episode II, Christensen enjoyed a run on the London stage in This Is Our Youth, Kenneth Lonergan’s play about disaffected yuppie druggies. He was rather good, by all accounts, though it is rumoured that, so immersed in the method was he for his portrayal of the unhygienic character of Dennis, he really did pong to high heaven. Indeed, his sweaty stage costume remained resolutely unlaundered throughout, he confirms. “I thought, ‘It will affect the actor I’m opposite (Jake Gyllenhaal), because he’ll smell me. It’s a stimulus that he should therefore react to.’”
Christensen loves London. He divides his time between it, his adopted home town, Toronto, and, inevitably, LA. As for what he does when he’s in England, he won’t say, other than that he has “made some good friends there”. And so his private life, as it should, remains off limits. It has led to all manner of speculation about him, nonetheless — a supposed affair with Portman, say, or, on the other hand, his briefly being vaunted as a gay icon — but this young soul is an old hand with the press. “The whole thing’s weird. It’s super- imposed on top of the experience of acting. I manage to have a certain humility about it, and manage to see just how ridiculous a lot of it is.” Until now, the most devilish revelation has come in a paparazzo shot taken in Sydney, which showed him puffing away on a ciggie. It’s how his father found out that he smoked.
Christensen’s independent bent is a bit more hands-on than you would think. His accidental discovery as a child commercials actor led him around the nether regions of thespianism, and his roots have remained at the low-rent end of the trade. A former tennis prodigy, he eschewed the sport for Canadian television in his native Vancouver (his speech retains trademark Canuck pronunciation, such as “aboot” for “about”). A stint in New York, however, studying at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, revealed a sense of purpose. That the Star Wars gig, in which he was selected over 400 other aspirants, came without any previous career escalation, he says, is an advantage. It was just another audition for him, and won’t knock him off course. “I fell in love with a craft of inhabiting other characters, and I wanted to play roles that were far from myself. Those roles aren’t usually in the mainstream of Hollywood fare.”
Despite the fact that another big studio job is in the offing (he is attached to play the young Hannibal Lecter, in another take on that character), his tastes have not wavered much. Last year came the drama Shattered Glass — about Stephen Glass, the reporter whose bogus articles became the subject of a Vanity Fair piece — which Christensen optioned and developed with his producer brother, Tove. Their Forest Park Pictures has more projects in the pipeline, including a Hermann Hesse novel, Knulp, which Hayden has adapted himself (“I had a bit of time on my hands,” he deadpans).
Christensen is no fool. He acknowledges absolutely that “for ever, I think, Star Wars and Darth Vader will be the first things people think of when they see me”. But he won’t entertain, for one minute, comparisons with another old Star Wars trouper: the actor who played his screen son and who, after the initial Star Wars trilogy, disappeared, only to resurface periodically, looking rather wrinkly, waxing about the old days and, no doubt, cursing the good fortune of Harrison Ford. “I think the whole typecasting thing, the Mark Hamill syndrome people refer to, is a little dated,” says Christensen. “Twenty or 30 years ago, when one big blockbuster came out every few years, it was easier for an audience to associate so severely. Now the audience is overly saturated with epics. I think it applies more to people who do a television show for five years.”
He is probably not wrong. “I’m privileged enough that I can be a part of it,” he insists. And, by the sound of it, he will probably go far. “I don’t know how long it’s going to last,” he adds, “so I’m milking it for all it’s worth.”
Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith is out on May 19
