Sundance has been good to Josh Hartnett. In 1999, he made his first visit with Sofia Coppola's critically acclaimed debut "The Virgin Suicides" and now, seven years later, he returns with the anticipated thriller "Lucky Number Slevin." And from Hartnett's point of view, not that much has changed.

"I think it's the same mentality," he says of the festival. "It does the same things ... young filmmakers get a showcase and that's great. I'm happy to be here for 'Slevin' because people have responded to it. It's so much more fun to promote a movie that people like."

A noir thriller in the vein of "The Usual Suspects," "Slevin" features Hartnett as a young man thrown into the middle of a dispute between two rival mobsters played by Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley. Bruce Willis plays a mysterious hit man that pulls Hartnett's character into the mix and Lucy Liu is the smart neighbor that tries to help him out of his mess. Hartnett gets to engage in lots of witty, well-written banter in the movie, although for a good portion of the picture he does it wearing only a towel.

The 27-year-old heartthrob smiles when asked how many days he had to endure being in his skivvies, noting it was 15 to 20 days at the most. As for the reporter's follow-up question, Harnett says, "Was there any towel snapping? Yeah, Morgan tried to take it off a couple of times ... not sure what that was all about."

One thing is clear: Hartnett is being taken seriously these days as a leading man, the proof being that he's also finished his third film noir, Brian De Palma's "The Black Dahlia." It's a rarity for an actor these days.

"I really just got into film noir recently," Hartnett says of his roles in "Sin City," "Slevin" and "Dahlia." "Literally, I had 40 film noir DVDs sitting in my trailer while I was working, because I wanted to see what it was all about."

One thing Hartnett is glad he didn't have to research was the title role in "Superman Returns." He was one of the finalists to play the Man of Steel and all the recent publicity for the new movie hasn't fostered any regrets over his losing the gig.

"That actually strengthened my resolve," Hartnett says. "I'm like, 'Thank god I'm not wearing the tights.' People should do whatever they want to do, but that's just not my thing. Different strokes for different folks."

"Lucky Number Slevin" opens nationwide on March 31.