Hayden Christensen Reveals Why He Took Hiatus From Acting

The meteoric rise to fame Star Wars: The Force Awakens stars Daisy Ridley and John Boyega are currently experiencing is something Hayden Christensen, star of the much-maligned prequel trilogy, can relate to. Like Ridley and Boyega, Christensen was plucked from relative obscurity and thrust on to the world stage in one of the biggest movie franchises of all time. Giving it all up for a simpler, farm-bound life is something that seems unimaginable for anyone in this position, but that is exactly what Christensen did.

Hayden Christensen Reveals Why He Took Hiatus From Acting

Speaking to Los Angeles Times, Christensen revealed that his overnight success made him feel like a fraud. “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,” he said. “I didn’t want to go through life feeling like I was just riding a wave.”

Christensen was cast as Anakin Skywalker when he was 19-years-old. He took a hiatus from acting in the mid-00’s and before the September release of his critically-mauled latest film, 90 Minutes In Heaven, hadn’t appeared on the big screen in over five years.

The actor spent his career break on his very own farm in Uxbridge, Ontario, with girlfriend Rachel Bilson. The two welcomed a daughter in September 2014.

“You can’t take years off and not have it affect your career,” he said. “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.”

The recent publication of Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a book detailing the creative process behind the film, revealed that Christensen was at one point mooted to make a cameo in a vision showing his battle with the dark and light side.

The cameo was not to be but it’s likely he could appear in future sequels.