NO ONE WAS MORE SURPRISED THAN HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN WHEN THE YOUNG CANADIAN WAS TAPPED TO PLAY ANAKIN SKYWALKER. HERE THE CABLE TV STAR-TURNED-DOOMED-JEDI KNIGHT RECOUNTS HOW HE LANDED IN THE STAR WARS UNIVERSE.
Not long ago, in a city not far away, Hayden Christensen was sound asleep in his Vancouver apartment, when the call came that changed his life forever. “I was in bed and my roommate walked in and handed me the phone,” he recalls. “As soon as I heard the voices of my manager, agent and lawyer all at the same time, I assumed they weren’t calling to give me bad news.”
Instead, the Vancouver-born, Toronto-raised actor was told he’d just won the coveted role of Anakin Skywalker in the next two instalments of the Star Wars series. “It was blissful and very surreal,” says Christensen, 21, who beat out more than 350 others, including Ryan Phillippe, Chris Klein and Leonardo DiCaprio, despite having the name recognition of your average North Dakota senator. “I was half convinced it was this big scheme that [the producers] were running… I figured I was sort of like their decoy and they were going to say I had it just to throw everybody off, and later they were going to announce somebody else.”
Christensen, a former competitive tennis and Triple-A hockey player, then in B.C. shooting the TV series Higher Ground, had every reason to disbelieve. After all, despite being a 10-year show-biz veteran (his first big break came on the Canadian soap Family Passions in 1993), Higher Ground was his biggest role so far. So how did he end up as the boy who would become Darth Vader?
Credit his aggressive handlers, who secured their client an interview with Lucasfilm casting director Robin Gurland back in early 2000. Within months, the six-foot-one Christensen (born Sterling Hayden Christensen, but known to his pals as “Big H”) was one of just 10 actors selected to interview with director George Lucas.
“He’s kind of like a rock star,” says Christensen, relaxing today in a Los Angeles hotel suite. “He has this entourage that just follows him around. But when you’re alone with him, he’s very disarming.”
They met at Skywalker Ranch, the Northern California compound which serves as the nerve centre of Lucasfilm. “I walked into the room and sat down on the couch opposite him. He had my resume in his hand and he looked over it for almost four minutes and said absolutely nothing. Then we started talking – not about Star Wars – but about my academics and my sports and my experiences in life.”
Their conversation likely touched on how Christensen, the third of four children born to writer Alie and software designer David, ended up in show business. “It’s an interesting story,” Christensen says in between chugs of bottled water. “My sister Hejsa was a junior world trampoline champion. When she was 13 or 14 she did a commercial for Pringles. The director wanted her to get an agent, so I went along because there was no one at home to babysit me.” That’s when Christensen was “discovered” and offered the chance to appear in a handful of Canadian television commercials.
Landing the gig in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones took a little more work. First, there was the small matter of a screen test with co-star {and on-screen love interest) Natalie Portman. “It was a scene that’s not going to be used in the actual film, but was still in the context of Star Wars,” he explains. Immediately, sparks flew between the two young actors. But was it romance or just a case of on-screen chemistry?
Although Christensen admits his co-star “made it very easy to look at her with adoring eyes,” he insists published reports of an off-screen romance are untrue. So far, he hasn’t let the tabloids get to him, though. “As long as they are not telling the truth in the tabloids I am okay with it. As soon as they get the truth, then I’m worried.”
But Christensen is willing to share certain information about his private life -like the fact that he continues to live at home in suburban Thornhill, Ontario, just outside Toronto, with his parents and teen sister, Kaylen. (His older brother Tove, 28, is an aspiring producer; sister Hejsa, now 26, has given up acting and the trampoline and “is trying to save the world” by attending law school.) “My family has a very important role in my life in terms of the decisions that I make,” he says. “I have a wonderful relationship with my parents.”
Still, the actor admits, ‘When I’m filming I become a bit of a recluse and I tend to push everyone away. I become very self-conscious around people that I care about when I’m trying to be something that I’m not, so I make sure that I am by myself when I’m filming. They will come visit me for a week or two, but only if I ask them to.”
Unlike his hot-headed character, Hayden wasn’t much of a troublemaker growing up. “My parents never grounded any of us,” he reveals. “They had me doing so many different activities that I didn’t have any time to do stupid stuff. I was always so heavily involved in athletics that I didn’t even have the chance to go to my friends’ birthday parties.” Indeed, sports were a priority in the Christensen household. Hayden’s father attended college on a football scholarship and brother Tove earned a free education from the Univer5ity of Pennsylvania thanks to his track skills. Originally, Hayden planned to go to university on a tennis scholarship, but got sidetracked by acting.
Yet, despite a love for his profession, he says he has yet to warm up to the Hollywood lifestyle and doesn’t really like Los Angeles. “It just seems too full of ambition. It’s overwhelming. Besides, all my friends are in Toronto.” And most of them are not actors, he says, adding that since he got the role in Attack of the Clones, his circle of friends has become much “smaller and much more defined.” Still, that small group of friends can’t hide their curiosity about the storyline for the much-anticipated sequel to 1999′s The Phantom Menace, which earned nearly $500-million (U.S.) at the box office, despite lukewarm reviews from fans and critics.
Unfortunately, he remains tightlipped about the project, saying only: “My character is very defined by elements out of my control – by other films and by other people who have played him. So the means in which I have to create are limited.”
The official Lucasfilm site offers only a brief plot summary: “Anakin has grown into the accomplished Jedi apprentice of Obi-Wan, who himself has transitioned from student to teacher. The two Jedi are assigned to protect Padme whose life is threatened by a faction of political separatists. As relationships form and powerful forces collide, these heroes face choices that will impact not only their own fates, but the destiny of the Republic.”
All other details are top secret.
After filming Clones, Christensen hung up his lightsaber and starred as a troubled, multiply pierced teen in the gripping Kevin Kline drama Life as a House which actually beat the Star Wars film to theatres with a November 2001 release. Since then, he’s juust been hanging out at home and letting my mom cook me breakfast.”
And enjoying the last few weeks of privacy, before being a Jedi completely takes over his life.
“I will experience a loss of anonymity that’s going to be unsettling,” he predicts. “You have to be pretty deranged to want to be famous on that level. But it comes with the territory. For now I relish the fact that I can still take the subway and do normal things with my friends that I might not be able to do in a year.”
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