Hayden Christensen Says Being In Star Wars Made Him Want To Quit Hollywood
And just like that, the My Life Got Shittier After The Release Of The Star Wars Prequels club gets its newest member. Following in the footsteps of Jake Lloyd and Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen is calling out Star Wars for ripping a stinky fart on his career. During a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, Hayden admitted that there was a reason why you went from seeing his dumb face everywhere to seeing it only when you searched the words “10 Worst Characters in Star Wars” on the internet. According to Hayden, he didn’t think he deserved to be famous, so he pulled an Irish Goodbye on Hollywood.
“I guess I felt like I had this great thing in Star Wars that provided all these opportunities and gave me a career, but it all kind of felt a little too handed to me. I didn’t want to go through life feeling like I was just riding a wave.”
“You can’t take years off and not have it affect your career. But I don’t know – in a weird, sort of destructive way, there was something appealing about that to me. There was something in the back of my head that was like, ‘If this time away is gonna be damaging to my career, then so be it. If I can come back afterward and claw my way back in, then maybe I’ll feel like I earned it.'”
Hayden didn’t retire from Hollywood completely; after Star Wars II and III, he made a couple films (like the trashy treasure Factory Girl). He recently slipped into some Sears catalog dad drag and tried to tip-toe back in with 90 Minutes in Heaven.
I wonder who will be the next to grab the mic and spit out some hot, sad truth about those Star Wars prequels? $20 says it’s Jar Jar Binks with an op-ed piece in the Naboo Sun-Times complaining about how the only acting work he’s gotten since Star Wars was an appearance in a promotional video for a herpes drug and a late-night commercial for a Gungan phone sex hotline.
Pic: Lucasfilm