Hayden's Darth side

In the final instalment of the Star Wars saga, Anakin Skywalker finally morphs into Darth Vader, cinema's embodiment of pure evil. Hayden Christensen, the actor who plays him, tells

Hayden Christensen is wandering around a hotel room in Rome three days before his 24th birthday trying to describe what it felt like to yield to his dark side and finally become Darth Vader in Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge Of The Sith, the final chapter of George Lucas's six-part sci-fi saga. The actor chugs on a bottle of mineral water while gamely attempting to describe the scene in which he becomes pop culture's blackest embodiment of pure evil. And it isn't happening. Frustrated, he keeps failing to find the exact word. 'It's the iconic moment. It's Darth Vader. To be totally enclosed in that suit, behind that mask, was extremely empowering. No... Intense? Overwhelming? Cool? I've got it - how about orgasmic?'

In the new film, Christensen gives the single greatest piece of acting in the Star Wars canon - Grand Shakespeare,' hosannahs one source. A bit different from the notices he got when Star Wars: Episode II - Attack Of The Clones hit our screens in May 2002. Then a bullfrog chorus savaged his performance as the adolescent Anakin Skywalker - the Jedi Knight doomed to become Darth. If the then 19-year-old had once felt 'lucky and blessed' to have landed the part over Leonardo DiCaprio and 400 other hopefuls, he must have felt his luck had run out.

'No, no,' Christensen protests. 'I can recall reading the script and saying to George, "If I play Anakin as on the page - the whiny teenage quality - there's going to be a backlash.'' And there was. But I thought the critics got it wrong. Sometimes they were blasting me for Anakin's flaws. Sometimes the feedback was...' he sighs. 'Sometimes I had to remind myself that George must have seen something in me.'

Indeed. Something else inside the Golden Boy package of blond hair, brown eyes and 6ft 1in frame, perhaps? In terms of his career, at least, what you see with Christensen is not what you get. In Life As A House he was the sensitive goth who rejected A-grades for auto-erotic asphyxiation (cue Golden Globe nomination). In Shattered Glass he impersonated the real-life Stephen Glass, journalistic wunderkind and almost pathological fantasist. The project he's working on in Rome is a comedy - a comedy! - about the Black Death entitled The Decameron. Right now he's mulling over Young Hannibal. Yes, that Hannibal, a budding genius drawn to cannibalism and French cooking. Odd, then, how nearly everyone read his Anakin so wrong. It's not a bad performance, but the performance of someone turning bad.

'I could say that my dark side has been the past five years, about fame and intrigue and really finding out about Hollywood. Except you're absolutely right. I do tainted. It's my thing. I never got to rebel at home or at school. I was well raised. Revenge Of The Sith? Big opportunity to rebel. I've found some very ugly places in myself playing those characters. I'm attracted to people who have stuff to hide.'

Does Christensen himself have stuff to hide? Well, after five years at the white-hot centre of the Star Wars galaxy - 'I've been consumed' - he's learned a few PR tricks. In the early days he was a notoriously lacklustre interview.

He's grown up since and now knows enough to toss journalists a pull-quote - his co-star Natalie Portman is apparently 'a great kisser' - and acts the tease. Ask him about those perennial rumours that he is gay and he bats absurdly long eyelashes.

Push for confirmation of a girlfriend, and all you get is, 'I feel I'm entitled to a private life.'

But the sensitive boy Lucas cast is still there and appears when you least expect it. Suddenly he is talking about his apparently tricky relationship with his father, David. The words tumble out, and boom, you understand why he's perfect casting for both Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader. After all, what are the Star Wars trilogies all about if not tortured bonds between fathers and sons?

Those conflicts just come wired into a kid with a 'straight-edged, sports-jock father' and 'an artistic, hippy mother' who cutely named her four children Tove, Hayden, Hejsa and Kaylen. Christensen is a triple-A hockey player who also plays jazz piano. A back-slapping guy who has trouble establishing eye contact.

'The most courageous moment of my life was telling my Dad that I wasn't going to university and was going to give this acting thing a go. To him acting is, and always will be, something without much dignity to it. He went to university on a football scholarship and he wanted that for his four children. You have to understand, my Dad believes you have to earn everything that comes to you, and acting, to him, isn't a worthy way of earning. We get on very well, but we'll never be on the same page as far as my career goes.'