As the rebellious and aloof Robbie, the son of Tom Cruise’s Ray in 2005’s “War of the Worlds,” Justin Chatwin managed to hold his own with the Hollywood big leagues: the aforementioned Cruise as well as director Steve Spielberg (that’s not to mention scene stealer Dakota Fanning, who played his sister). Estranged from his father, and then driven to a near-suicidal decision to join the fight against deadly alien forces, Chatwin conveyed a personal story amid the special effects and thunderous roar of one of that summer’s biggest films. He followed the high profile movie that year with the part of Billy in the quirky and memorable “Chumscrubber.”
Chatwin, born and raised on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, did not originally plan to go into acting. When he was 18, he took up a friend on a dare to accompany him on an audition. The bug bit him, and Chatwin never looked back. His first part was a small one in the television miniseries, “Christy, Choices of the Heart,” followed by a small role as a rock fan in “Josie & The Pussycats” in 2001. He followed that with a small part in the Sci-Fi Channel miniseries “Taken” in 2002, his first official work with Steven Spielberg. But his first recognizable role was in another miniseries, “Traffic,” in 2004, followed by another quirky and memorable part was as a youthful and disturbed hitchhiker in “Taking Lives.”
After his double threat in 2005, Chatwin lit up fan message boards online with the announcement of his next role, as an adult film star in “The Pornographer’s Poem,” set for release in 2006, and in “The Invisible,” directed by David Goyer, also set for 2006.