Josh Hartnett plays a brutal serial killer dubbed ‘The Butcher’ in director M. Night Shyamalan’s new psychological thriller film Trap, which hit theaters Friday.
And the actor, 46, revealed to Entertainment Weekly that he drew acting inspiration from ‘psychopaths’ he’s come face-to-face with in show business over the years.
‘There are a lot of CEOs, politicians, people in our business… a lot of people who are at the top,’ Hartnett dished.
‘They don’t mind stepping over people or doing horrible things to get where they’re going, and not having any empathy is a pretty big sign of being a psychopath.’
With these ruthless real-life people in mind, Hartnett and Shyamalan felt they could mold the perfect complex character.
‘Whether or not you’re murdering people, I’ve met people like this, you know what I mean? So it was easy to take it all a step further, make it a little bolder, and make his cover so intense,’ he explained.
Josh Hartnett, 46, revealed to Entertainment Weekly that he pulled acting inspiration from real-life ‘psychopaths’ he’s come face-to-face with in show business to play a serial killer in M. Night Shyamalan’s new psychological thriller film Trap
Hartnett plays Cooper Adams, a serial killer who’s a target of a police sting operation
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In Trap, covert serial killer Cooper Adams (Hartnett) takes his teenage daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to pop star Lady Raven’s massive concert as her reward for getting good grades in school, only to realize that police are using the event as a sting operation in order to finally capture him.
The former Penny Dreadful star then spoke about how the entire movie is shot from Cooper’s perspective — initially tricking the audience into empathizing with him.
This plot device has become a go-to for Night and his films.
‘Night being Night, he wants to give the audience a new experience,’ Hartnett explained. ‘He’s been doing this his entire career. He’ll take a ghost story and tell it from the point of view of the ghost. He’ll take an alien invasion story and not really show the aliens.
‘So this one is like a throwback thriller in a contained space from the perspective of the antagonist. It’s like Die Hard from Hans Gruber’s perspective.’
Along with Hartnett and Donoghue the cast also features Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan, Hayley Mills, Alison Pill, Marnie McPhail, Vanessa Smythe and Kid Cudi.
The director and the stars of his latest production have been out en force promoting his new thriller, with recent stops for premieres in Rome, Madrid, Berlin, London, and New York City.
Shyamalan, who was born in Mahé India but grew up in Penn Valley, Pennsylvania, released two films in the 1990s before scoring his big breakthrough film with The Sixth Sense (1999).
In Trap, Cooper (Hartnett) takes his teenage daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to pop star Lady Raven’s massive concert as her reward for getting good grades in school, only to realize that police are using the event as a sting operation in order to finally capture him
‘Night being Night, he wants to give the audience a new experience,’ Hartnett said of his director, who has made a career out of the supernatural, thriller genre of filmmaking
That set off a string a big hits for the filmmaker that includes Unbreakable (2000), Signs (2002) and The Village (2004), that ultimately ended with the release of Lady In The Water (2006), which barely covered the $70 million budget.
His biggest box office success was with The Sixth Sense, grossing $672.8 million while working with a $40 million budget 25 years ago.
Written, directed and co-produced by M. Night Shyamalan, the two-time Academy Award nominated filmmaker worked with a budget of $30 million while making Trap.
To date, the film made $6.6 million on its first day, including an estimated $2.2 million from the Thursday night previews.