The man who will be Vader

Thornhill, Ont. actor lands coveted Star Wars role

TORONTO -- It's finally official. The Force is with locally-raised teen actor Hayden Christensen.

"I think it got out, you know, before the official word," the 19-year-old from Thornhill understated last night, after Lucasfilm ended rampant speculation by announcing that Christensen will indeed play Anakin Skywalker in the next two Star Wars films.

"I had this great secret I was so excited about, but I couldn't tell anybody," Christensen said in a phone interview from L.A. "So I mean, I was always walking around with this big smile on my face and everyone was like, 'So, why are you so happy?' I was like, 'Yeaah, you'll find out soon enough.' "

A great secret, indeed.

Star Wars is the most successful film franchise in history. Who would play Anakin as a teenager and young adult was the biggest question surrounding Episodes II and III, the upcoming second and third movies of a trilogy of prequels to the original Star Wars movies.
Seduced by dark side

Anakin is the innocent boy who becomes a heroic Jedi Knight but later is seduced by the dark side and transformed into evil man-machine Darth Vader, father of Luke Skywalker. The role has been played by actors ranging from eight-year-old Jake Lloyd in The Phantom Menace to 82-year-old Sebastian Shaw in Return Of The Jedi.

Star Wars casting director Robin Gurland spent six months searching for the next Anakin, winnowing the list of candidates from 442 to two dozen, and then to a handful. Others rumoured to have made it to the final cut were Cruel Intentions star Ryan Phillipe, Tom Hanks' son Colin from the TV series Roswell, and British pop band S Club 7 member Paul Catermole.

Christensen sealed the deal two weekends ago with a screen test opposite actress Natalie Portman at George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch in northern California.

"I'm looking forward to working with Hayden," Lucas, the Star Wars writer-director, said in a statement posted on his official Web site (starwars.com) late yesterday.

"He is very talented, has a great command of his craft, and I know that he has the physical and emotional attributes to play Anakin Skywalker at perhaps the most complex stage of Anakin's life."

After learning he had landed the role more than a week ago, Christensen told only his family and a few close friends.

"When I phoned my mom when I found out, she was screaming at the top of her lungs. My entire house was just chaotic," he said.

As the rumour mill churned, especially among Star Wars fans on the Internet, Christensen savoured his last days of relative anonymity, "enjoying my time walking around in public and not being Darth Vader."

Warned about fame

He's been warned about the magnitude of fame and attention about to descend upon him.

"Of course, it's petrifying, especially coming from the position I was in prior to Star Wars. It'll be a change and, you know, you deal with it as it comes along and just hope you can cope."

Christensen has been acting professionally since age seven. His largest role previously was playing a troubled teen with a drug problem on the Vancouver-made TV series Higher Ground.

His other credits include the current feature The Virgin Suicides and several TV movies -- Trapped In A Purple Haze, Freefall, Danielle Steel's No Greater Love, Harrison Bergeron, In The Mouth Of Madness and Love And Betrayal: The Mia Farrow Story. He also had a regular role on Canadian soap opera Family Passions and had guest appearances on the series The Famous Jett Jackson, Forever Knight and Are You Afraid Of The Dark?

Higher Ground will debut here this fall on ONtv and is already on twice every weekday in the U.S. on Fox Family Channel. Christensen hasn't seen his own show on the air, because the L.A. apartment he and brother Tove, 27, recently moved into isn't yet equipped with cable TV.

He said last night he's determined not to let his sudden mega-stardom go to his head. If he did, his family wouldn't let him get away with it, he joked.

"My grandma, especially," he said. "She lives on Long Island. She's a New York Italian grandmother, so she could give me a beating if she wanted to."

Tove, being older and more exposed to the earlier Star Wars films, is especially keen on keeping his little brother in check.

"He says that I've ruined it for him. He's like, 'You're not Darth Vader. Come on! I just kicked your ass last week. Come on!' " Christensen said.

Hiding out

In the past few days, while Christensen hid out in Vancouver, his family in Thornhill also was obliged to keep his big secret, Politely but steadfastly refusing to comment to the media. Christensen's parents have a home-based communications business.

Tove, the eldest of their four children, attended university on a rugby scholarship and also worked as an actor, including a small role in Robert Townsend's film Without Limits.

Tove and Hayden have a production company together and are planning to make a low-budget, coming-of-age movie called Roadside Attractions with Higher Ground creator Matthew Hastings.

Hastings said he knew instantly when he met Christensen last year that the actor had "that intangible star quality."

"He's become a very dear friend of mine," Hastings said yesterday. "He is one of the most genuine and thoughtful people I know. He's soft-spoken, he's not arrogant, he's a really good, solid Canadian fellow, you know what I mean?"

Michael Braverman, the veteran Hollywood producer who was an executive producer of Higher Ground, predicted Christensen will become "an enormous actor in the next 10 years."

Braverman is experienced at spotting young talent. He created the acclaimed series Life Goes On, and was responsible for adding future Oscar-winner Hilary Swank to the cast of Beverly Hills, 90210.

On the Higher Ground set, he found Christensen level-headed, quiet and somewhat shy.

"There was no ego," Braverman said. "If there was, it was extraordinarily well hidden."

Christensen's two sisters also have the acting bug. Kaylen, 15, is currently enrolled in Unionville High School's drama course, the program from which her brother graduated last spring. Sister Hejsa, 25, also is a grad.

"The school's quite abuzz," said Jeff Young, head of the drama department and Christensen's teacher in Grades 10 and 12. "The big joke was if Hayden was Anakin Skywalker, then who was I? They decided it makes me The Force."

For his senior school project last spring, Christensen performed in a dark, emotional role similar to his part on Higher Ground.

"A couple of us said, 'This is the next James Dean,' " Young recalled of watching that final school performance.

'To-die-for attractive'

"He really is to-die-for attractive," the teacher said. "I think he was either in an undershirt or bare-chested and he was beginning to become defined already. There were a lot of girls in the audience."

Christensen said he hopes his good fortune will cheer other young, aspiring actors.

"I hope that, at the very least, it inspires them to follow their dreams in acting and to take risks and to just get out there and do what you're going to do, and not be afraid of whether you're going to be successful or not -- because anything's possible, you know," he said.

"I never would have thought that I'd be in Star Wars, and here I am."

Christensen plans to come home to visit his family before Episode II begins rehearsals in Australia early next month. Principal photography is scheduled to run until September.

"I've never been outside of North America, so it'll be an awesome way to see the world," Christensen said.