Josh Hartnett modelled his 'Trap' serial killer after certain "people in our business".
Josh Hartnett in Trap
The 46-year-old actor stars in M. Night Shyamalan's new movie as Cooper, a father taking his daughter to a concert where people have set up a sting operation to take down The Butcher, his homicidal alter ego, and he explained he looked at "people who are at the top" for inspiration on his alter ego's cold-blooded ruthlessness.
He told Entertainment Weekly: "There are a lot of CEOs, politicians, people in our business… a lot of people who are at the top.
“They don’t mind stepping over people or doing horrible things to get where they’re going, and not having any empathy is a pretty big sign of being a psychopath.
"Whether or not you’re murdering people, I’ve met people like this, you know what I mean? So it was easy to take it all a step further, make it a little bolder, and make his cover so intense.”
Josh praised the director for making a film that allowed the audience to empathise with his killer character.
He said: “Night being Night, he wants to give the audience a new experience.
"He’s been doing this his entire career. He’ll take a ghost story and tell it from the point of view of the ghost. He’ll take an alien invasion story and not really show the aliens.
"So this one is like a throwback thriller in a contained space from the perspective of the antagonist. It’s like Die Hard from Hans Gruber’s perspective.”
But the filmmaker explained he wanted to be "very careful" because he was making the movie “from the killer’s point of view".
He said: “What is he feeling or not feeling? He’s an interesting character to be with because he’s coming alive when things get scary. He gets more playful when things are getting tighter. But with the close-ups, you show him starting to panic.
"As it goes, our close-ups get tighter and tighter, and it starts to become a nightmare.”
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