Hayden Christensen was a big star of the early 2000s largely thanks to his role as Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader in the Star Wars movies.
His on-off relationship with actress Rachel Bilson, with whom he has a child, put him even more in the spotlight before he seemingly retreated from Hollywood.
He was last back on TV screens after reprising his most famous role the 2022 miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobi and last year’s Ahsoka.
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Christensen was born in Vancouver, Canada, on April 19, 1981, to mum Alie, a speechwriter, and David, a computer programmer and communications executive. He is one of four children, with all three of his siblings all pursuing acting careers,
While still a child, he accompanied his older sister to her agent’s office and was cast in a Pringles commercial, which led to other advertising campaigns.
He made his acting debut at 12 in the 1993 German-Canadian television series Macht Der Leidenschaft/Family Passions.
The following year, he won a small role in the film In the Mouth of Madness, before winning roles in films and TV series, including Goosebumps, The Virgin Suicides and Are You Afraid of the Dark?
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His role in the 2001 film Life as a House earned him praise and Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations for best supporting actor. The next year he made his London theatre debit before starring in the film Shattered Glass.
Superstardom was just around the corner when he was cast as Anakin Skywalker in the 2002 film Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones.
During an interview with Empire this year, Christensen recalled the first time he heard about the role.
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The cast of Star Wars: Then and now
“I was 18 and I got a call from my agent saying that they were casting for Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars and I thought, ‘Wow, how cool.’ But it just seemed too big,” Christensen said.
“And I remember asking my agent, ‘Is there maybe another role that they’re also casting right now that you can put me up for? because Anakin sort of seems unattainable’. And there was not. So I threw my name in the hat like everyone else.”
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The casting director considered about 1500 actors for the role of a lifetime, including Leonardo DiCaprio, before director George Lucas finally selected Christensen.
Christensen recalled, “I had heard that they’d met with Leonardo and a bunch of other actors. That just confirmed my thought that the role would go to another actor. Through the entire auditioning process I had told myself, from day one, that I wasn’t going to get the part. It just wasn’t a possibility.”
Lucas said at the time he chose Christensen because he needed an actor who has that presence of the ‘Dark Side’, which was essential to tell the story of Anakin Skywalker’s fall from grace and transformation into Darth Vader.
The movie, which also starred Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Natalie Portman as Padmé Amidala, was shot mostly in Sydney’s Fox Studios, and was a hit.
Christensen said McGregor “took me under his wing” during filming “because he knew it was all really new to me”.
“We quickly became very close friends, but I also really looked up to him,” he said.
While it is rumoured he dated Portman, it has never been confirmed. However in 2023, he hinted they were once close during an interview with Showbiz Cheat Sheet.
“You know, you have to be a little bit [in love] if you’re really going to believe yourself in the role,” he told the outlet. “We’re pretty good friends now, but you know, it’s something that you just have to sort of believe.”
Natalie Portman open to reprising Star Wars role
Christensen and Portman went on to reprise their roles in the 2005 film Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.
In 2002, he made People magazine’s annual list of “50 Most Beautiful People” and in 2005, was named one its “50 Hottest Bachelors” and placed on Teen People’s “25 Hottest Stars Under 25” list.
After his Star Wars roles, he appeared in Awake and Factory Girl, before starring in the film Jumper, about a young man who can teleport.
During filming in 2006, Christensen began a relationship with his co-star, Rachel Bilson, of The O.C. fame.
They became engaged on Christmas Day, 2008.
They worked together again on the 2008 film New York, I Love You, before they split in mid-2010.
At the time, they blamed the fact she was based in LA while he preferred to live on the farm he had bought near Ontario, Canada, in 2007.
They rekindled their relationship a few months later, but stayed mostly out of the limelight and rarely attended events together.
They welcomed their first child, daughter Briar Rose, on October 29, 2014. She was named after the Disney princess in the 1959 film Sleeping Beauty.
In September 2017, the couple separated for good.
Christensen himself said in 2008 that he preferred life on the farm where he learnt about livestock, crops and agricultural machinery. He also said he was renovating the farm’s homestead himself.
Since then, his acting work has been sporadic, appearing in just five films since 2014, of which one was a vocal cameo as Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
Most recently, he appeared in the TV miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobi, which aired in 2022, and in four episodes of the Disney+ series Ahsoka.
Christensen, now 43, has never married and has not been publicly linked with anyone since splitting from Bilson, with whom he shares custody of Briar.
He recently told a MegaCon audience in Orlando, Florida, that she was yet to watch the Star Wars movie that made him a star because she would rather watch re-runs of a decade-old Disney TV show, Liv and Maddie.
Christensen, who has a reported net worth of about $18 million, splits his time between his farm in Canada and a cabin retreat on the outskirts of LA.
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