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Lightening the Mood: Hartnett says there were certain bits of dialogue included in The Black Dahlia just to add a little comic relief because the material is so dark. ?Brian added elements of comedy, like the shot that becomes first person. The meeting of the Linscotts was very funny, I thought. Brian has a devil may care attitude about filmmaking, which I love. He wants to make it entertaining.

He wants to make it pulpy, in a way. He wants to make it operatic and fun. I appreciate that. There are certain films that you need to take with the utmost seriousness, if you?re telling a true story, through and through. This film is fictionalized. It?s based on Ellroy?s book, which also has some of that humor. We added little humorous elements all the time. We never wanted unintentional laughs.?

Preparing for the Big Fight Scene: Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart square off in the boxing ring in one of the film?s crucial scenes, however Hartnett admits he spent way too much time getting ready to step into the ring. ?I didn?t need to,? said Hartnett, ?and I knew that I wasn?t going to need to. I knew it was only going to be one scene in the film. But Ellroy makes a direct correlation between the way that Bucky acts as a fighter and the way that he acts in his life. He?s Mr. Ice in both, and the way that he takes apart an opponent is very similar to the way he takes apart the case. So, for me, when I got into the ring, I felt I was starting to really understand the character.

I spent seven months boxing, five days a week, four hours a day, like they were training me to actually have a fight. And then I would run for an hour every day. It was intense. My trainers were really into it. They were killing me. The first day of training, or maybe the first few days, they put me in the ring to try and spar, to just show me that it wasn?t going to be a cake walk. I think I made it less than a round before I was just passing out. You start to hyper-ventilate and you don?t know how to keep your cool, and you don?t know how to start to pick apart your opponent. You don?t know how to defend yourself. By the end of it I was going seven rounds with 30-second intervals for time off, which is equivalent in a normal bout of going a full 10-round fight, so I was tip-top. It all helped me understand the character because it was all about being able to take my time and pick my opponent apart and act decisively at the right moments, but not until then. Bucky?s a boxer, not a fighter, and that just gave me direct insight into the character.?

James Ellroy and Bucky: Ellroy sees the character of Bucky as an extension of himself, but Hartnett says he and the author never spoke about that connection prior to shooting the movie. ?He didn?t tell me that until the Venice [Film Festival]. For me, I guess that?s a compliment, if he sees himself in what I did. But it was kind of obvious that he had written from a personal perspective because it?s a first-person narrative and because he has said, many times, that this book was written in this way to exorcize the demons that were haunting him, due to his mother?s death. The Dahlia and his mother?s murder were inextricably linked for him, and so I assume that there was some sort of autobiographical tendency to the character. But my job was just to take the work that was on the page because if I tried to play James in this film, it would have been a wild film, man.?

Everyone Smokes in The Black Dahlia: Because everyone did back in the 1940s, almost all of the characters in Brian De Palma?s film smoke. Hartnett in particular is hardly ever seen without a cigarette. Hartnett had to crank up his own smoking habit for the role, something he definitely didn?t enjoy. ?I was smoking two packs of Camel Straights a day, plus when I got off work, I would smoke another pack of Camel Lights. It actually made me quit smoking for a long time.?

How did he keep that up while continuing to train for the physical aspects of the role? ?That was the hard part. I didn?t smoke through all the training at all, and then, when I got to set and had to start smoking again, that just tore me apart, but I had to do it. You can see it in the movie. I look sallow. I look sick through a lot of the film because I am. I?m working 12 hours a day, going to the gym for as many hours as I can, and I actually started eating meat while I was there because the Bulgarian doctor didn?t know what else to do with me. He said, ?You eat meat?? I said, ?No. He said, ?Eat meat.??

Hartnett hasn?t totally kicked the habit since filming completed, but has drastically reduced the number of cigarettes he smokes. ?I could see myself getting older,? explained Hartnett. ?I could feel myself getting older. It was immediate because it was so much smoke.?