When Hayden Christensen was scared he'd lose the role of Anakin Skywalker to Leonardo DiCaprio

Hayden Christensen famously played Anakin Skywalker, aka Baby Darth Vader, in 2002's Attack of the Clones, the second in George Lucas' Star Wars prequel trilogy about the rise of sci-fi's most iconic villain. Christensen's performance was widely ridiculed at the time for being overly wooden, although to be fair, that critique was leveled at the films in general. I don't know how much an actor can really do to bring to life lines like this:

In any case, the prequel trilogy put Christensen on the map, and he's worked steadily in Hollywood ever since. But it could have gone a different way. Earlier this year, Christensen talked to Empire about how he was sure the role would go to someone else: "I had heard that they’d met with Leonardo [DeCaprio] and a bunch of other actors. That just confirmed my thought that the role would go to another actor. Through the entire auditioning process I had told myself, from day one, that I wasn’t going to get the part. It just wasn’t a possibility. And I think that probably helped me a lot, because it just freed me up in a lot of ways. And so it really came as a surprise to me when I got the part.”

At the time, Leonardo DiCaprio was still coming off the record-shattering success of Titanic, which turned him into a worldwide heartthrob. Still, he's seven years older than Christensen, who was 20 at the time, so I can see why Lucas and company might have wanted to go with the fresher face to play the budding young galactic menace.

Christensen recently returned to play Anakin in both Ahsoka and Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney+, and while reviews of those series have been mixed, everybody's been thrilled to see him. The days when he was a punching bag for Star Wars fans are long over.

But Christensen still remembers them; if you were into nerdy stuff at the time, it's hard to forget. “The character was criticized, my performance was criticized, and that part sucked,” he said. “But I also felt like I had some context that perhaps helped a little bit. When ‘Episode I’ came out, there was a lot of excitement that they were making a new ‘Star Wars,’ and it was going to be the backstory of Darth Vader. But I had friends that were upset that the character was starting off as this young kid. And I watched the film, and I loved it. It was everything I wanted and more. And I didn’t understand the disconnect between the movie that I saw, and the negativity in some of the reviews.”

"In a way that sort of criticism, I think, comes from a certain failure of their own suspension of disbelief. If you’re gonna go sit in a theater, and the opening scroll starts with, ‘A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,’ that’s setting the stage that anything is possible. These people don’t need to sound and behave the way that we might expect. And if you’re going to sit down and think that you’re getting something that is of our current zeitgeist, then you’re setting yourself up for something else. You know what I mean?"

I'll confess I don't fully know what he means — like, I don't people were upset with the Star Wars prequels because they weren't what they expected or because they weren't part of the current zeitgeist; I think they were upset because, in their eyes, the movies were bad — but I'm not going to second-guess him too hard; I can't imagine the amoung of criticism he had to deal with for years afterwards. Whatever he's gotta do to get perspective is fine.

Will Christensen return as Darth Vader again? Disney is still going pretty hard on new Star Wars TV shows, so it's definitely possible. There might even be room for DiCaprio in one of these upcoming movies or shows.

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