Streaming Guide
Where to Stream Josh Hartnett's Movies and Shows
By Jordan A. · · 4 min read
Josh Hartnett is in the middle of one of the best comeback runs in Hollywood. The early-2000s heartthrob who walked away from fame is now a reliably unsettling character actor, and his new Netflix series Below is the perfect excuse to revisit everything that got him here. He plays a hard-bitten Newfoundland fisherman fighting to protect his town from a mysterious sea creature, with Mackenzie Davis and Charlie Heaton alongside him. If Below reminds you how good he is, here is where to find the rest of the Hartnett canon.
Start with the new stuff on Netflix
The easiest entry point is sitting on Netflix right now. Below is the fresh six-episode creature thriller, and it pairs beautifully with Trap, M. Night Shyamalan's 2024 film in which Hartnett plays a seemingly ordinary father who takes his daughter to a pop concert that turns out to be an FBI sting built to catch a serial killer. Trap is also streaming on Netflix, which means you can run a modern Hartnett double feature tonight without hunting across apps. Both lean on the same quality: his gift for making a normal-seeming man quietly terrifying.
The prestige peak: Oppenheimer
Hartnett's return to the A-list came through Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, where he plays the physicist Ernest Lawrence, friend and foil to the title character. It is a supporting role, but it put him back in the center of the conversation and reminded everyone he can hold a frame opposite the best actors working. If you want to see the comeback's turning point, this is it. For more films in that same ambitious, big-swing register, our list of movies like Oppenheimer is the natural next stop.
The horror era: Penny Dreadful
Before the film comeback, Hartnett did some of his most interesting work on television in Penny Dreadful, the lush Victorian horror series where he starred opposite Eva Green. It wove together Dracula, Frankenstein, and Dorian Gray into one gothic nightmare, and Hartnett's haunted American gunslinger was its steady center. It is essential viewing if the eerie tone of Below is what hooks you, and it slots neatly beside the picks in our roundup of the best horror movies of 2025 for anyone building a spooky-season queue.
The early blockbusters
Hartnett became a star on the back of two 2001 war films. In Black Hawk Down he played Sergeant Eversmann, the moral anchor of Ridley Scott's harrowing account of the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, and in Pearl Harbor he was one point of the romantic triangle in Michael Bay's wartime epic. Both were huge, both still hold up as showcases for a young actor carrying enormous productions, and both are the kind of broad hits that are easy to find across the major rental and streaming services.
The cult favorites
Dig a little and you hit the films Hartnett fans actually argue about. Lucky Number Slevin is a twisty 2006 crime caper that gets named his best more often than anything else. The Faculty from 1998 is a gleefully silly sci-fi horror romp, and The Virgin Suicides from 1999 is Sofia Coppola's dreamy, melancholy debut. There is even Oh, Lucy!, a small, strange, wonderful dramedy that is free to watch on Tubi right now if you want to see him in a quieter key. These are the films that explain why his fans never stopped waiting for the comeback.
How to build the Hartnett marathon
If you want a single themed night, go thriller: Trap then Below, both on Netflix, for a straight shot of modern Hartnett menace. If you want to trace the whole arc, go chronological: The Faculty and The Virgin Suicides for the kid, Black Hawk Down and Pearl Harbor for the star, Lucky Number Slevin and Penny Dreadful for the wilderness years, then Oppenheimer and Below for the return. It plays like a career in three acts, which is rarer and more satisfying than it sounds.
Why he is worth the marathon
What makes Hartnett compelling now is exactly what the industry missed when he stepped back. He is not a movie star coasting on charm. He is an actor who uses an easy, all-American surface to hide something off, which is why Shyamalan cast him as a smiling killer and why he works so well in horror. That unsettling quality runs straight through Below, and it rhymes with the slow-dread thrillers we gathered in our look at films like The Whisper Man. Once you notice it, you cannot unsee it, and it makes even his older films play differently.
The deep cut worth finding
If you make it through the hits, reward yourself with The Virgin Suicides. Sofia Coppola's 1999 debut is a hazy, aching portrait of suburban adolescence, and a young Hartnett plays the swaggering heartthrob Trip Fontaine in a handful of scenes that linger long after the film ends. It is the furthest thing from Below or Black Hawk Down, which is exactly why it belongs on the list. It shows how much range he had from the very start, and it doubles as a gorgeous piece of filmmaking in its own right. Think of it as the palate cleanser after all the dread, proof that the actor pulling off a smiling killer in Trap could also break your heart two decades earlier.
The one catch
The frustrating part of a filmography this varied is that it is scattered everywhere. The new work sits on Netflix, the prestige films live on different services, and the cult favorites hide on free platforms you forget you have. Figuring out which Hartnett title is streaming free tonight versus which one costs a rental is the exact chore BingeNext was built to erase. Tell us what you already pay for and we will hand you a Hartnett watch order that lives entirely on your existing apps. Get movie recommendations and build the marathon without the scavenger hunt.
Topics covered: josh hartnett, below netflix, trap, oppenheimer, penny dreadful
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and is responsible for every guide published on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu. Dates, season counts and where-to-watch details in these guides are checked against official sources before publishing, and corrections are welcome at Jordan@Bingenext.com.