Hayden Christensen (born April 19, 1981) is a Canadian actor. He appeared in Canadian television programs when he was young, then diversified into American television in the late 1990s. He moved on to minor acting roles before being praised for his role of Sam in Life as a House. He gained international fame playing the young adult Anakin Skywalker (Darth Vader) in the second and third Star Wars prequel trilogy films and David Rice in Jumper.

Christensen was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, the son of Alie, a speechwriter for the heads of large companies, and David Christensen, a software program writer and communications executive. His father is of Danish descent and his mother has Italian and Swedish ancestry. Christensen has an elder brother and sister, Tove and Hejsa, and a younger sister, Kaylen. Raised outside Toronto in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Christensen attended E.J. Sand Public School, Baythorn Public School and Unionville High School in Unionville, Ontario, Canada. He was an athlete in high school, playing hockey competitively and tennis on a provincial level. He spent summers in Long Island with his maternal grandmother, Rose Schwartz, and attended the Actors Studio in New York as well as the Arts York program for drama at his high school. He was "discovered" when his older sister Hejsa, a former trampoline champion, was shopping around for an agent after he landed a role in a Pringles potato chips commercial.

Christensen's first acting role was on the television series Family Passions, which aired on Canadian television in September 1993, when he was 12. The following year he acquired a minor role in John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness. From 1995 through 1999, he appeared in several movies and television shows, including Harrison Bergeron, Forever Knight, Goosebumps, The Virgin Suicides, and Are You Afraid of the Dark?.