NEW YORK — Hayden Christensen no longer yearns to teleport himself away from interviews. He saves that skill for his new movie, “Jumper,” which sits atop the box office after its release last Thursday.
Christensen folds his 6-foot-2 frame into a cramped dressing room at MTV’s “TRL” studio. He’s on a promotional whirlwind in Manhattan after junkets in London, Rome and Cairo, Egypt. Talking about himself and his movies, even in a quickie chat, is reflex now.
He occupies a significant place in cinema history, having played Anakin Skywalker and eventually his incarnation Darth Vader in the “Star Wars” prequels “Attack of the Clones” (2002) and “Revenge of the Sith” (2005).
He’s probably part of cinema’s future, too. Only it is far less certain what that future is. Christensen, just 26, is looking to gain traction post-George Lucas. He made a movie called “Virgin Territory,” set during the plague, and its domestic release has stalled. He co-starred with Jessica Alba in the ticket-repelling “Awake.”
In a slump are you, Yoda might say. “I don’t really think about that stuff,” Christensen said. “That’s someone else’s job to stress about.”
“Jumper” gives the actor a high-profile chance to re-emerge as the master of his universe. It has cool-science cachet — its inhabitants can beam themselves to wherever by willing it. Its director is the cool-geeky Doug Liman, who jump-cut his way into spy-franchise prominence with 2002’s “The Bourne Identity.”
And it gave an actor fated for the dark side in a popcorn space opera to experiment once again with being naughty, after Liman substituted him for the original actor who was cast, Tom Sturridge (“Being Julia”). Christensen’s character, David, steals and shows off for his screen (and rumored real-life) girlfriend Rachel Bilson (“The O.C.”) until a mysterious cop played by Samuel L. Jackson tries to stop him.
Christensen is using himself to move and shake off-screen, too. He became a producer for the first time in developing “The Beast of Bataan,” in which he also will play the lawyer for the Japanese general who led the World War II death march. “It’s really just a means to be more proactive in my career,” he said, “going out and getting stories that are of interest instead of waiting for them to come my way.”
He got into the business by doing commercial and TV work in Toronto, then earned notices south of the border with his goth crybaby in “Life as a House” (2001). In 2003, critics cheered his portrayal of nebbish desperation as the fibbing journalist Stephen Glass in “Shattered Glass.” Meanwhile, the “Star Wars” prequels gave the actor a glimpse of how quickly opinion can change. Many crucified Lucas for his wooden dialogue and Christensen for enabling it with a stiff performance.
“Obviously it’s preferable when people respond to your work in a positive light,” he said. “I sort of think it’ll take people some time before they’ll look at it with an objective perspective. Twenty years from now how people see those films and my work in those films will matter to me.”
The actor says he never will escape his connection to the franchise — and that’s fine. He says he is lucky to have been a part of it.
These days he does a pretty good job of escaping, period. He makes his home in Toronto and on a farm he recently bought just north of it. His best friend, Carlo, whom he has known since he was 6, is a construction worker. Carlo visits him on the set and remains unimpressed with the scene, the actor says.
“I’ve found my circle of friends now that will remain consistent,” he said. “I think I do have a good radar for how genuine someone is.”
When asked about Bilson, the doe-eyed sprite with whom he has been linked since they shot “Jumper,” he replies that he avoids addressing anything “that implies something I don’t talk about.” Yet he later mentions that he went snowboarding while accompanying her on a recent trip to Aspen, Colo.
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