Hayden Christensen shot to worldwide fame as Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequels, but the actor decided to pack it all in and live on a farm for four years
Star Wars legend Hayden Christensen decided to ditch Hollywood and live a very different life.
Hayden’s iconic role as Anakin Skywalker in George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels helped define the childhoods of millions of Star Wars fans around the world. He’d been acting for over a decade before becoming the conflicted Jedi Knight who turned to the Dark Side.
But he was just 19 when Star Wars creator George Lucas cast him in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002). Suddenly, he gained a level of worldwide fame and that only few actors will understand.
The prequels ended up receiving a ton of backlash, but it seems that any criticism of the movies or his portrayal of Anakin wasn’t what drove him to retire from acting for a few years. It would appear he had a great appreciation for his time in the films – and nearly 20 years later, he would his role in the Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi.
The truth is that the whirlwind of success Hayden achieved after the prequels left him feeling like something of a fraud. It would appear that Hayden, who turned 43 today (April 19), felt he hadn’t earned the countless acting opportunities coming his way off the back of the Star Wars movies.
“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.”
Revenge of the Sith, the third of the prequels, came out in 2005, and Hayden would go on to appear in several other projects, including films Awake (2007), Virgin Territory (2007), and Jumper (2008). In 2010, he decided to leave acting for four years.
The Canadian actor packed it all in and decided to live on the farm in Ontario, Canada, that he’d bought in 2007. He’d spoken about learning to run the farm in 2008, during an interview with the Toronto Farmer.
He said: “It’s a hobby, but I want to have the appearance of being a proper farmer. I’m trying to figure it out. It’s all new to me, but I would eventually like it to be a fully operational farm with livestock and different crops.
“I’ve got a tractor and an excavator and I’m learning to use all the construction equipment. Right now there’s an apple orchard that I want to extend and I’ve started a small vegetable garden and I want to turn a hayfield into lavender.”
The star returned in 2014 with films such as American Heist and Outcast. The following year, when 90 Minutes in Heaven came out, he opened up about taking so much time out from acting and how it impacted his career.
“You can’t take years off and not have it affect your career,” he said at the time. “But I don’t know – in a weird, sort of destructive way there was something appealing about that to me.
“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 afterwards and claw my way back in then maybe I’ll feel like I earned it.”
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
