Josh Hartnett injured in car crash with Canadian police vehicle during trip to film Netflix project

Josh Hartnett was hospitalised with minor injuries after his vehicle collided with a police car in Canada last week.

Hartnett was in the Newfoundland capital St John’s to shoot an as-yet-untitled Netflix project with Stranger Things star Charlie Heaton and Station Eleven’s Mackenzie Davis.

The Oppenheimer star was a passenger in an SUV taking him home from set when it collided with a Royal Newfoundland Constabulary patrol vehicle, according to CBC News.

In a statement on 25 September, the police said they were “investigating following a collision involving one of its patrol vehicles”.

According to the statement, a 59-year-old man was driving the SUV when the crash occurred just before 1am. Both the driver and the 47-year-old male passenger were “sent to hospital with what is believed to be minor injuries”.

Both the vehicles sustained “significant damage” and the officer in the police car was also taken to hospital as a “precaution”.

USA Today quoted a representative for Hartnett as confirming the actor had been “looked at and then released back to work”.

The Independent has reached out to Hartnett’s representatives for comment.

Josh Hartnett in a scene from ‘Trap’ (Warner Bros Entertainment Inc)

Netflix announced in August that production had started on what was described as the “Untitled Newfoundland Project” with Hartnett, Davis, Heaton, as well as Willow Kean, Ruby Stokes, Rohan Campbell, and Kaleb Horn.

“When a mysterious sea creature terrorises a remote Newfoundland town,” the series description reads, “a hard-bitten fisherman must fight to protect his family, his community, and his vanishing way of life.”

Hartnett was a breakout star of the 1990s and 2000s thanks to appearances in films such as The Faculty (1998), The Virgin Suicides (1999), and Black Hawk Down (2001).

But he took several breaks from acting and moved out of the US to live in Hampshire with his wife, the British actor Tamsin Egerton.

Hartnett said last year he decided to step back from Hollywood for several years after being stalked by “borderline unhealthy” fans.

Speaking to The Guardian, he said one of the reasons he chose to move away from his early fame was that “people’s attention to me at the time was borderline unhealthy”.

“There were incidents. People showed up at my house. People that were stalking me.”

By way of example, he recalled that when he was 27, “a guy showed up at one of my premieres with a gun, claiming to be my father. He ended up in prison”.

“There were lots of things. It was a weird time. And I wasn’t going to be grist for the mill,” he said.

In recent years, however, Hartnett has returned for high-profile roles, including in Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-winning Oppenheimer (2023) and M Night Shyamalan’s psychological thriller Trap.