30 Days Not Hairy For Hartnett

Josh Hartnett, who stars as sheriff Eben Oleson in the upcoming horror film 30 Days of Night, told SCI FI Wire that he tried to talk the producers into giving him a beard at the beginning of the film, but that he was overruled.

"The turmoil of the beard really comes down to, they wanted me clean-shaven at the beginning of the film," Hartnett said in an interview at the press junket in New York. "And it would have been a lot easier had I been able to grow as much as I can grow, which is kind of pathetic, and then add pieces as we moved further along. I mean, it is Alaska. It is cold there."

But Hartnett didn't win the argument. "There were just people that just didn't believe that it was a good idea for me to start the movie with a beard," the hunky actor said. "I actually sent a letter to somebody about different people who were in very successful films that had beards. And I tried to explain how much I wanted [it by] pointing out who had how much and where I would fit in that progression. It didn't work."

The issue came up last month, following a Los Angeles screening with producer Rob Tapert and director David Slade. "I don't want to talk about beards," Slade told the audience that time. "The beards were a nightmare. I mean, on top of working in freezing-cold conditions at night, and then having continuity. We were shooting out of sequence, because you never start at the beginning and shoot your way through the story. And it's just like, 'What stage of beard are we at now? OK, what stage of beard are we at now?' One of the biggest headaches, actually, were the beards."

Tapert added: "What David doesn't want to say is, he had to start with a clean face. He had to start with a clean face. That was the edict, perhaps. Or the common goal."

Hartnett admitted that the various stages of beards did help him to find a continuity in his character when filming scenes out of order. "We had the fake beard to tell me where I was in the timeline of the piece," he said. "Yeah. It's always difficult to make all the pieces match up, but that's the puzzle that is being an actor in film. You also have editors and directors to help you out with that too. But I think that in a film like this, because there are so many kind of key points that are physical, you know exactly where you stand pretty much the whole time, I think."

30 Days of Night also starring Melissa George, Danny Huston and Ben Foster, opens Oct. 19. —Cindy White

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