ANNE IN WONDERLAND
AFTER SHEDDING HER SNOW-WHITE IMAGE, NOT TO MENTION HER FRAUDSTER EX-BOYFRIEND, FORMER DISNEY PRINCESS ANNE HATHAWAY HOLDS HOLLYWOOD IN THE PALM OF HER HAND
TEXT DAMON SYSON
It’s fitting that Anne Hathaway’s big film in 2010 is Alice In Wonderland. The theme of Lewis Carroll’s book is growing up, and even though she’s just 27, the New York-based actress has been through some tough times that have forced her to mature both professionally and personally. “I feel like I’ve come out on the other side of a lot of things,” she muses. “A lot of baggage that I carried around for a long time has been cleared away. I don’t know, maybe that’s what people call growing up.”
Hathaway stars as the White Queen in Tim Burton’s dark retelling of the children’s classic, which also features Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen and Little Britain’s Matt Lucas as Tweedledum/Tweedledee. Hathaway describes working on the film as “a lovely, surreal dream come true”, adding: “The thing about Tim Burton is there are no limits to his imagination.”
It should come as no surprise that Burton chose Hathaway to play the ethereal, dreamy White Queen.
Critics rhapsodise over her doe-like beauty and the sunshine smile that led director Garry Marshall to describe her as “a combination of Julia Roberts, Audrey Hepburn and Judy Garland”.
Hathaway first hit the big time in Disney’s The Princess Diaries in 2001. She instantly became the go-to girl for cutesy roles – and ever since then she’s been desperately trying to convince the world she’s not some squeaky-clean prom queen but in fact a dark, tortured thesp. “The problem with being a nice, sweet person,” she says of her saccharine Hollywood image, “is that people just assume you’re, sort of, not smart enough to see the pitfalls and the darkness. Somehow, being dark authenticates you. I have nothing against The Princess Diaries, but it has been a brick wall at times for my career.”
Still, thanks to stand-out performances in films such as Brokeback Mountain and The Devil Wears Prada, Hathaway has succeeded in shaking off her butter-wouldn’t-melt image, becoming one of the most sought-after actresses in Hollywood. Indeed, by 2008, it looked like everything was coming up roses. If anything, the one criticism levelled at Hathaway was that her life seemed too perfect.
Then, 18 months ago, all that changed. In June 2008, she broke up with her boyfriend of four years, Raffaello Follieri, a dashing Italian businessman and the man everyone (including her, it seemed) had assumed she would marry. Within a week, Follieri was arrested, accused of swindling investors out of millions of dollars while posing as the Vatican’s chief financial officer. Federal investigators claimed he used the money to fund a glamorous life that included yachts, holidays and the opulent $37,000-a-month apartment he shared with Hathaway on New York’s Fifth Avenue.
In the weeks that followed, the press had a field day. Under headlines like “The Princess And The Con Man” gleeful articles raked over every detail, claiming that Hathaway herself had shopped her ex to the FBI. Follieri was eventually sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail for fraud.
The affair was devastating for Hathaway. Although she later poked fun at her predicament on Saturday Night Live – joking: “I broke up with my boyfriend, and two weeks later he was sent to prison for fraud. I mean, we’ve all been there, right, ladies?” – she admitted that she “spent a week in shock” after Follieri’s arrest, but credits her friends’ support with pulling her through.
“It’s a situation where the rug was pulled out from under me all of a sudden,” she says. “But just as suddenly, my friends threw another rug back under me. I’ve been shown such kindness. Not everyone gets that. A lot of people go through tough times alone.”
One of the questions asked at the time was how such an intelligent, sensitive and successful young woman could end up with a man like Follieri. But the forensic press coverage shed light on certain aspects of her character. The Anne Hathaway that began to emerge was an intense, insecure person who admitted she had suffered from bouts of depression during her teenage years, though she eventually overcame the disorder without medication. “You know those girls that, like, go out?” she commented. “I’m just not confident enough to do that. I’m not the sort of girl that will throw on a short skirt and tease her hair up. I feel uncomfortable with attention. Truly, I am a wallflower by nature.”
As a young girl she had even toyed with the idea of becoming a nun – until she became aware of the Vatican’s attitude to homosexuality. “I was raised Catholic,” she told reporters. “When I was 11, I felt like I got a calling from God to be a nun. But when I was about 15, I realised that my older brother was gay, and I couldn’t support a religion that didn’t support my brother. Now I call myself a nondenominational Christian, because I haven’t found the religion for me.”
BECOMING ANNE
She was born in Brooklyn, the daughter of a lawyer and an actress, and grew up in a creative household: “It was nothing to get up in the middle of a meal and run over to a doorframe and pretend like it was a stage and perform a song. There was always music in the household; we were always taken to the theatre and museums. It was an artistic environment and hugely influential.”
Raised in middle-class comfort in suburban New Jersey, she got involved with the local theatre, going on to study with the Barrow Group, a prestigious New York theatre company. At 16, she was chosen to play Meghan Green in TV drama show Get Real. She was praised but the show was cancelled after one series.
Deciding to follow an academic path rather than acting full-time, she went on to study English at the highly prestigious Vassar College. Fiercely intelligent, even today she can be rather more outspoken than Hollywood approves of, especially on the issue of being asked to lose weight for roles. “I’ll be honest with you,” she says. “It really, really annoys me, the image that’s put out there for women. These tiny bodies with absolutely no fat at all on them. It’s unhealthy, plain and simple, and there are only a handful of women in the world who are naturally like that. It makes me sick.”
In 2000 Hathaway took time off from Vassar to star in The Princess Diaries, which became a massive sleeper hit, earning $108 million at the box office. Hollywood came a-calling and she was forced to abandon her studies, going on to star in The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement and a further tiara drama, Ella Enchanted.
Even back then, however, Hathaway was keen to explore her darker side. In 2005 she starred in Havoc, a no-holds-barred drama about wealthy high school girls flirting with gang culture. Much of the media coverage centred on the Disney princess’s lack of clothes: “I know people are going to focus on the fact that I’m topless in Havoc,” she said. “But it was necessary for the film. My character is a shallow girl who’s so jaded about her sexuality that she has no problems sharing it.”
Hathaway continued to make waves with a well-received performance as Jake Gyllenhaal’s wife in Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain. But the 2006 comedy The Devil Wears Prada was the real calling card. It was on this film that Hathaway met one of her best friends, British actress Emily Blunt. According to OK! Magazine, Hathaway is due to be chief bridesmaid at Blunt’s upcoming wedding in June of this year.
Blunt believes that the combination of taking on more challenging dramatic roles and the fallout from the Follieri affair have in a strange way been beneficial for Hathaway, enabling her to mature as an actress: “I think she’s at a point where she can breathe and discover her whole bag of tricks,” says Blunt. “She has this newfound sense of confidence, and as her friend, that’s very exciting to see.”
Hathaway is the first to admit she was overly intense about her work in the past and gained a reputation for throwing herself into roles with a bit too much gusto. She prepared for one film, for example, by working out her character’s handwriting, even though she’s never actually seen writing.
Now, by all accounts, Hathaway is a far more laid-back individual. When asked what she does when she’s not working, her response is: “I read, I hang out with friends, I love to go horseback riding, I travel, I dream, I write a bit. I keep my life very, very quiet and it’s lovely when it’s calm.”
GET SMART
Prick the surface just a little and Hathaway is the first to admit she has not always been so chilled. In fact, she looks back on her early behaviour on film sets with a degree of shame. “I was not the most fun girl to be around,” she says about her time filming The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement.
And the gradual letting go of her inhibitions goes for her life off-screen too. “My New Year’s resolution,” she commented last year, “was to find my inner rock star and liberate her.”
There was certainly no holding back when it came to her tour-de-force performance in 2008’s Rachel Getting Married, in which she plays a recovering drug addict who leaves rehab for the weekend to attend her sister’s wedding. She was Oscar-nominated for her performance but lost out to Kate Winslet.
”I feel like there’s a clear point in my life before this movie and after this movie,” she said of her performance. “I’ve had the most honest artistic experience of my life. And I will spend, minimum, 20 years searching for another one of these.”
That elusive role might not yet be on the horizon but 2010 still looks like a busy year. Projects in the pipeline include Love And Other Drugs in which she is reunited with Jake Gyllenhaal, and Garry Marshall’s Valentine’s Day. Due for release on 12 February, it’s an American Love Actually following 10 people whose lives intersect on Valentine’s Day.
All in all, things are looking rosy for Hathaway, both professionally and personally. She is in a steady relationship with actor Adam Shulman and there are even rumours that he plans to propose.
She once said in an interview that her greatest fear was loneliness. But the one thing that seems to have come out of the fallout from her disastrous romance was a renewed sense of confidence and a less tortured outlook on life. “I’ve realised,” she says, “that no one is as good at making me feel isolated as I am. It’s something I did in the past. I have a lot of people in my life who, for whatever reason, love me very much.”
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