STACK 132 October Issue

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Brooklyn-born Anne Jacqueline Hathaway
has been favourably compared to Judy
Garland and Audrey Hepburn. With her
doe eyes and prim demeanour, Hathaway was
a perfect fit for Disney films and period dramas,
and since her film debut in The Princess Diaries
in 2001, she has matured into an appealing and
versatile star. Her Disney audience has effectively
grown up with her.
Having started out in school productions and
stage plays, Hathaway progressed to television
in 1999 as a member of the dysfunctional Green
family in Get Real, alongside Jesse Eisenberg.
Her feature debut in Disney's The Princess
Diaries (2001) immediately launched her as a
Hollywood star. Playing a shy schoolgirl who
discovers she's royalty, Hathaway shared the
screen with the legendary Julie Andrews and
her luminous presence became an inspiration
to teenage girls everywhere. Consequently, she
found herself pigeonholed in similar fare like the
faith-based The Other Side of Heaven (2001),
Ella Enchanted (2004), and sequel The Princess
Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004).
Hathaway has described her teen princess
phase as something of a "brick wall" in terms of
career advancement, so it was no surprise that
her nude scenes in Havoc (2005) were perceived
as an attempt to escape family film typecasting,
despite her insistence that they were simply part
of the job. "Anybody who was a role model for
children needs a reprieve," she said. "Films are
letting me get older, which is really nice, because
there was always this fear of what happens when
I stop being a teenager. But for everyone else, it
was kind of a sharp left."
Brokeback Mountain (2005) had a profound
impact on Hathaway's subsequent career path;
cast as Lurleen Newsome, the wife of Jake
Gyllenhaal's sexually confused Jack, she had
finally discovered the kind of film she wanted to
make. "I'm more proud of that film than anything I
have created," she has said.
The Princess Diaries was Hathaway's big break,
but it was The DevilWears Prada (2006) – in
which she played the assistant to Meryl Streep's
monstrous fashion mag editor – that relaunched
her as an adult star and onto the Hollywood A-list,
After playing Jane Austen in the biopic
Becoming Jane (2007), she revealed a flair
for comedy as Agent 99 in Get Smart (2008),
opposite Steve Carell, and followed that with one
of her best dramatic performances to date: as
a recovering drug addict in Jonathan Demme's
Rachel Getting Married (2008).
She appeared as a counsellor to air crash
survivors in the little-seen supernatural thriller
Passengers (2008) before starring as Kate
Hudson's BFF in the awful BrideWars (2009),
a film she describes as "hideously commercial –
gloriously so".
Hathaway joined the ensemble cast of
shamelessly tailormade "date movie" Valentine's
Day (2010) and returned to the House of Mouse
in 2010 as the White Queen in Tim Burton's lurid
Alice inWonderland. She will also appear in the
upcoming (and Burton-free) sequel
Alice Through the Looking
Glass, which has just wrapped
for release in 2016.
The raunchy Love
& Other Drugs (2010)
reunited her with
Jake Gyllenhaal, as a
Parkinson's sufferer who
falls for his drug company
rep, and indie flick One Day
(2011) paired her with Brit Jim
Sturgess in a relationship that's
revisited on the same day every year.
Hathaway was ecstatic to land the role of
Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman, in Christopher Nolan's
The Dark Knight Rises (2012) – after believing
she would be auditioning for Harley Quinn – and
received praise from US President Barack Obama,
no less, who considered her “the best thing”
about the film. She would team up again with
Nolan for Interstellar in 2014.
The plum role of Fantine in Les Misérables
(2012) had special significance for the actress,
having been played by her mother on the stage.
Recommended for the part by co-star Hugh
Jackman, Hathaway managed to bury memories
of Susan Boyle with her emotional rendition
of "I Dreamed a Dream", and her 100 per cent
commitment to a tough role was duly rewarded
with an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress the
following year.
It's been almost a decade since Hathaway was
memorably menaced by Meryl in The Devil Wears
Prada, but that hasn't stopped her from returning
to the world of fashion with another Oscar-winning
Hollywood icon at her side in The Intern (2015).
As the founder and CEO of an online company
who reluctantly takes on a senior intern in the
form of Robert De Niro, Hathaway finds herself
bridging the generation gap in this sweet comedy
from writer-director Nancy Meyers.
visit FEATURE EXTRAS
018 OCTOBER 2015
ANNE
HATHAWAY
From Disney Princess to Catwoman.
The Dark Knight Rises
Rachel Getting
Married
The Devil Wears Prada Les Misérables The Princess Diaries
debut
Breakthrough
Oscar
Anne
Hathaway
career path