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Star Wars Prequels Star Hayden Christensen Reveals Why he Quit Hollywood

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Among the most notable casualties of the much-derided ‘Star Wars’ prequels was actor Hayden Christensen, who played Anakin Skywalker.

Instead of the films propelling the Canadian actor towards a lasting career in Hollywood, he retreated from the limelight, starring in only a handful of films after his appearance in the third prequel, 'Revenge of the Sith’, none of them making much of an impact.

Now he’s revealed why he decided instead to spend several years on a farm he bought in Ontario.

“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 told the LA Times.

“I didn’t want to go through life feeling like I was just riding a wave.”

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He’s now set to appear in his first movie in five years, a faith-based drama called '90 Minutes In Heaven’.

He added: “You can’t take years off and not have it affect your career. 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 afterward and claw my way back in, then maybe I’ll feel like I earned it’.”

Post-'Attack of the Clones’, for which he earned the Razzie for Worst Supporting Actor, he appeared in the drama 'Shattered Glass’, and then post 'Revenge of the Sith’ he appeared in 'Factory Girl’, alongside Sienna Miller, and sci-fi thriller 'Jumper’ in 2008.

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'90 Minutes In Heaven’ sees him play a man who seemingly dies in a car crash, but miraculously comes back to life claiming to have seen heaven.

Sadly, it’s been largely panned by critics in the US.

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Image credits: Lucasfilm/Rex Features