Hayden Christensen is shaking off the Star Wars label and emerging as one of Hollywood's hottest actors, with lead roles this year in Jumper and Awake. But away from the big screen he's adapting to a rather different role - as a farmer.

Whilst most movie stars tend to go for flash sports cars and luxury pads on the beach, Canadian-born Hayden invested in a farm last year, complete with pigs.

"I tried to spend most of my past summer there," he says. "I've got these two miniature pot-bellied pigs and the female is very much the girl and the male is very sort of rambunctious, curious, oinking animal.

"They are actually very intelligent and are supposed to be smarter than dogs. They became litter-trained within the first couple of days," he adds.

But the harsh realities of farming could prove difficult - he admits he's struggling to even eat meat, let alone take his animals to slaughter.

"It's a big dilemma for me right now. I am not a vegetarian and I like my meat but having these pigs is definitely starting to mess with my head!

"I actually had my family over yesterday and so I went up to the market to buy food and usually I would buy pork ribs. I had this whole thing at the counter as to whether or not I should get them. I didn't get them."

When he's not in Canada down on the farm, Hayden is out globe-trotting, admitting he's spent lots of time in the Bahamas ("the beaches are really nice") and London.

But for his latest film, Awake, he went back to New York, where he'd studied at the Actors Studio.

The thriller sees his character undergo a heart transplant just hours after marrying his fiance, played by Jessica Alba.

But as his character Clayton Beresford slips under the anaesthetic, he realises he can still hear and see everything but is unable to move - a real-life medical phenomenon known as 'anaesthetic awareness'.

Trapped in a kind of chemical straightjacket, Clay can feel the surgery and hears secret conversations, which make him realise he's never meant to wake up.

"It was a really scary premise," admits Hayden. "But there was a little over a week of filming where I had to be lying down on an operating table, completely dormant and that got very boring!

"I wasn't actually lying on top of the table, that was a prosthetic body, but my head was what it was attached to.

"I was actually in this contraption that they had built that looked like an operating table, so my body was really contorted underneath.

"It was in an awkward position for sometimes a couple of hours before they'd take a break and let me out because it was a fifteen minute ordeal to get me in and get me out again. And then they'd tape my eyes shut and stick some thing in my mouth!"

Hayden's character Clayton had a seemingly charmed life, with a doting mother, a beautiful fiance Sam and a cardiologist (Terence Howard) as a best friend.

But he also has a deadly heart condition - and can't tell his mum (Lena Olin) about his fiance because Sam works for her.

He finally confesses their relationship and is shocked when his mum offers to pay Sam to 'go away'. In haste he betrays his mum and marries Sam.

But while he's under the anaesthetic, he hears things that suggest he might have put his trust in the wrong person.

It's a complex and emotional plot - a world away from light-sabres and Jedi mindtricks.

"I like to be part of things that are different and play roles that are contrasting. That's the challenge and that's what I like."

His last movie outing was as a hounded teleporter in sci-fi thriller Jumper, so does he pick more intense roles on purpose?

"I don't know, I guess I am attracted to those characters subconsciously and so I have played a few of them. But I think they still are different. Although, they all seem to have that undercurrent of serious conflict."

In Awake, Hayden also gets to play the romantic fiance - at least until he goes under the knife - sweeping Jessica Alba off her feet.

Is he that romantic in real life?

"Well... not that long ago, a few months ago, I made a really nice swing for Ellen my girlfriend.

"I made it myself from a piece of wood and carved it out and made some engravings on it. I hung it from a pretty tree that sits on a hill on the farm."

Hayden grew up just outside Toronto and spent summers staying with his grandmother in Long Island, near New York.

It was here he enrolled in acting classes and broke into television with his first show Family Passions on Canadian TV when he was 12.

In 2001, he landed his first major film role as a misunderstood teenager in Life As A House, which earnt him a Golden Globe nomination, before overnight stardom came with the part of Anakin Skywalker in the following year's Star Wars II: Attack Of The Clones.

He earned good reviews for 2003's Shattered Glass, the true story of journalist Stephen Glass, who made up stories for a political magazine.

But it's with Jumper and Awake that Hayden is really making his assault on Hollywood.

He's also signed up to appear alongside William Hurt and Willem Dafoe in World War II drama Beast Of Bataan.

After a stint treading the boards in London before his Star Wars fame in This Is Our Youth in 2002, Hayden says he would love to return to the West End.

"I really like London and I like the theatre and I really liked my experience when I was there, so I would love to do it again."