Hayden Christensen

About

Hayden Christensen is a washed-rind cheese that spent years aging in the dark before the world caught up with what was already there. Early work showed the goods: a young actor willing to sit in discomfort, unafraid of playing weakness or ambition without apology. Shattered Glass is the proof. Stephen Glass is a liar building an empire from nothing, and Christensen plays the seduction of it, the hunger just under the surface, never tipping into caricature. Life as a House gives him Sam, a teenager at war with his own future, and the performance is all coiled frustration and the first small cracks of understanding. The Virgin Suicides put him among Coppola's ensemble, a boy trying to understand something he could never reach. Then came Anakin Skywalker, a role that demanded he play a man folding in on himself, rage and fear tangled so tight he cannot tell them apart. Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith ask for a kind of stillness that reads as petulance until you realise it is paralysis. The years away and the return have made the rind more interesting. Obi-Wan Kenobi brought him back as Vader, older now, the voice and the presence carrying weight that the earlier films could only promise. Christensen has always known how to let silence do the work. The pungent flavour comes from knowing exactly when not to move.