Hayden Christensen Explains Why He Left Hollywood After ‘Star Wars’

By ETCanada.com Staff. Published: 30 Dec 2015 3:59 PM

For many, landing a leading Star Wars role would be a highly-coveted break of a lifetime.

But for Hayden Christensen, the sudden fame left the Canadian actor feeling unaccomplished and unfulfilled. Now, a day after it was revealed he was meant to reprise his role as Anakin Skywalker in The Force Awakens, he’s opening up about why he left Hollywood after making it big.

The actor, who’s back on the big screen in the faith-based film 90-Minutes In Heaven, explained the reasoning behind his retreat. “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,” he told the L.A. Times.

Since rocketing to fame in two Star Wars prequels, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, the Vancouver-born star has starred in 10 films, welcomed a daughter with Rachel Bilson and escaped to Uxbridge, Ontario where he “bought some farmland” and learned the ins-and-outs of farming.

“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,” he explained about his time away. “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.’