In one of his first social media posts in several years, actor Josh Hartnett surprised fans on Wednesday with a wordless, five-second Instagram video — sending his biggest admirers into a bona fide frenzy about his “Hartnettaissance.”
The reactions are certainly warranted. While he never truly vanished from Hollywood, the actor did step back from the spotlight for a while. And Hartnett has never been one for consistent social media activity, so his appearance this week prompted overjoyed reactions.
“Me promoting my film before ghosting social media for another 10 years,” Hartnett joked in text overlaid on a video shared on the official account for his upcoming movie, “Fight or Flight.” The video shows the actor captured by what appears to be the selfie camera of an iPhone with added sound effects to suggest he’s frantically typing the message.
Hartnett first popped up on the account earlier this month with a few lighthearted videos, but none seemed to grab users like Wednesday’s self-aware threat of “ghosting” yet again.
“JOSH, don’t do it! We need you. The Hartnettaissance isn’t over!” one person joked about the actor’s resurgence and joking threat to disappear yet again, with another cheekily writing: “2035 shaking in its boots right now trying to figure out how to top that.”
“What the hell? Josh Harnett?” another fan commented, appearing to mistype the actor’s name.
Hartnett was 20 years old when his breakout role in “Halloween: H20” (1998) made him a star. He was soon regarded as a heartthrob with performances in the World War II action-melodrama “Pearl Harbor” (2001) and the 2002 romantic comedy “40 Days and 40 Nights.”
The actor proved equally gifted as an action star, leading blockbuster war movie “Black Hawk Down” (2001) and the 2007 horror flick “30 Days of Night.”
While he never truly quit acting, Hartnett left Los Angeles in the early 2000s and started focusing on smaller indie films for a while. The actor told HuffPost in 2017 that he stepped back to regain “control of my own destiny,” noting that Hollywood “can be an unhealthy environment.”
Fans are thus openly celebrating Wednesday’s addition to what some have dubbed the “Hartnettaissance,” which arguably kicked off with an appearance in Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” (2023) and continued last year with M. Night Shyamalan’s “Trap.”
“Please josh you need to come back,” one fan commented Wednesday, with the official account for Britain’s Sky TV confirming: “also here for the Hartnettaissance.”
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