The new M. Night Shyamalan horror movie Trap finds Josh Hartnett playing a father who takes his teen daughter to a pop star’s stadium tour, only for them to wind up at the center of a “dark and sinister event.”

But for a certain demographic of moviegoers, the idea of being trapped anywhere with Hartnett doesn’t sound like a horror movie at all—it sounds like a queer millennial’s dream come true!

Yes, for gays of a certain age, Josh Hartnett is the ultimate Hollywood heartthrob, responsible for many a “gay awakening.” And it seems that his recent step back into the spotlight is bringing up a lot of old feelings…

The actor first splashed onto the scene in a huge way in 1998 with a one-two punch of horror hits: Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, where he played the son of Jamie Lee Curtis’ eternal scream queen Laurie Strode, and The Faculty, a star-studded high school alien invasion romp.

Now, the gays’ love of the horror genre has been well-documented, so right out of the gate Hartnett was perhaps unknowingly endearing himself to the LGBTQ+ community. But this was just the beginning, and the handsome star had a little something for everybody at the turn of the millennium.

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He was the romantic lead in O, the comedic horn-dog in 40 Days And 40 Nights, the square-jawed war hero in Black Hawk Down and Pearl Harbor, and even the dream-boy for the more sensitive, indie types in The Virgin Suicides.

Pick your genre: For the better part of the 2000s, Josh Hartnett was there—and he looked damn good doing it.

It doesn’t take a scientist to understand why baby gays would be utterly obsessed with him. Just look at the evidence: He was—and still is—absolutely gorgeous. And even when his movies weren’t specifically queer, many of them had a certain appeal (you can cut the homoerotic tension between Hartnett and Ben Affleck’s characters in Pearl Harbor with a knife).

But it’s not just gay guys who feel this way; Hartnett was an important “gateway crush” for a lot of queer women, too.

As Vulture writer Rachel Handler argues, his distinctive beauty encompassed both masculine and feminine features—there’s a reason sapphic rom-com Happiest Season features a poster of him hanging in the childhood bedroom of the movie’s still semi-closeted lesbian protagonist. (Fun fact: it was directed by Clea DuVall, Hartnett’s co-star in The Faculty!)

On top of that, Hartnett—who married actress Tamsin Egerton back in 2021—has proven himself to be a total ally. For example, did you know that, at the height of his fame, he was originally supposed to star in Ang Lee’s gay Western Brokeback Mountain? Scheduling commitments to The Black Dahlia meant he had to drop out of the film, which he still sees as the “biggest regret” of his career.

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And that’s okay because he did eventually give us the on-screen gay moment we’d been waiting for in an unforgettable episode of Showtime’s Penny Dreadful that aired a decade ago this summer!

The gothic horror drama saw Hartnett playing gunslinger Ethan Chandler, working alongside explorer Malcolm Murray (Sir Timothy Dalton) and medium Vanessa Ives (Eva Green) to combat supernatural threats in Victorian London. The series introduced a number of queer characters and storylines over the years, including Ethan’s short-lived fling with the immortal Dorian Grey (Reeve Carney).

In an early Season 1 episode, the two can’t fight their strong desire for each other and proceed to have a very unexpected, yet very, very hot sex scene. Sadly, Penny Dreadful never explored their relationship further for whatever reason, but it’s a moment we will never, ever forget. (And neither will Carney, who famously said it would all be “downhill” after kissing Hartnett on screen.)

Recently, the actor has opened up about how he made a conscious decision to step out of the spotlight after his early 2000s heyday, calling all of the attention he received overwhelming.

And while it’s been a joy to see him pop up in more high-profile projects of late—from Oppenheimer to Black Mirror to that cameo on The Bear—we hope he can continue to do so on his own terms, and that we can all respectfully thirst after and appreciate this talented man who has given us gays so, so much.

So, here’s to the great Josh Hartnett, our unproblematic crush. We’ll be buying a ticket to Trap this weekend in support of you, king!

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