Anne Hathaway

by Lynn B.

There are a ton of Princess-style movies hitting screens in recent years; those two President’s daughter films with Mandy Moore and Katie Holmes, then the current The Prince and Me, etc. Beautiful 21-year-old brunette actress Anne Hathaway starred in one of the first, The Princess Diaries, based upon the popular novel. She’s also filmed Princess Diaries 2 which should be out later this summer. Currently, Anne is starring in Ella Enchanted based upon another very popular novel. It’s kind of like a live-action Shrek, with an imaginary kingdom and a girl who isn’t trapped in a tower like Fiona but by a curse that makes her do literally anything she is told. Ewww, boy is that icky or what? Of course a cute prince is involved in Ella’s quest to reverse her curse. Anne admits to literally falling out of her chair upon meeting cute Hugh Dancy who plays her Prince. The actress also got to sing and dance in this film. She has Broadway experience. Who knew?

It was a cold day in Beverly Hills when we sat down in the same hotel where they filmed Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman years ago. In a gorgeous room fit for a princess, Anne, wearing cute knit hat, colorful Prada dress and gold dangle earrings, promised to “speak slowly and enunciate clearly”. Evidently someone had gotten on her case about this earlier. We think she’s peaches and cream perfect.

AGW: Okay, lets start with the good stuff (she leans closer). How did you develop your chemistry with cute co-star Hugh Dancy?

Anne: We had it from the first time we met, his audition. I mean, people often ask me if I fell off my chair for the 'Princess Diaries' audition. I did. For his audition I fell of my chair again, but just because I thought, 'Oh my God, I get to work with this guy for three months? Woo-hoo!' And then I fell over. I mean, you can work on the pacing or the dialog and the banter. We watched a lot of old films, a lot of Katherine Hepburn Spencer Tracy films. We watched Roman Holiday together and we had a lot of conversations about it. But ultimately, when we got to the set we just sort of looked into each other's eyes and hoped that it would be there.

AGW: Is there someone in your life that serves as a fairy godmother?

Anne: I do have a godmother in real life and she’s a bit small and petite and looks a bit like Gail Carson Levine (the author of the “Ella Enchanted” book). I certainly have a lot of people that look after me in my own life but no, I’ve always been very independent and proactive in doing things on my own.

AGW: Did you ever believe that your prince will come along?

Anne: Yeah, like when I was 7 (laughs), and it was a fun analogy to buy into. I still do believe that in my future I will end up with one person, but I have no assurances of that so I’m just having fun in the interim. Now I know that the definition of Prince Charming is more specific yet at the same time broader than I used to think. Love is a crazy thing!

AGW: Do you feel like a role model or just do your thing?

Anne: I just sort of do my thing. I don’t feel a burden as a role model. I understand that I can be seen as one but I like to think of it more as the characters that I play. Ultimately, people don’t know me that well, so if people were to look up to me as a role model, I would feel that would be empty because they’re not really looking up to you, they’re looking up to an ideal of their own projection, which I guess is kind of cool, but it doesn’t really have anything to do with me.

AGW: What was the appeal for you to do this movie?

Anne: I was doing a play in New York at the time called “Carnival”, and I was playing a wonderful character named Lily, and I got the offer to do Ella Enchanted. I thought I could see a lot of similarities between these two characters so if I could recapture some of that magic I felt in “Carnival” on screen, wouldn’t that be interesting? Secondly, I loved the book. I just thought it was such a wonderful project. Gail’s characters are so great. I was just talking to her earlier and now I just want to write children’s books for the rest of my life and have that lovely life. I thought this could be a really good time making this film. I was 19 at the time I made it.

AGW: Are you afraid you’ll get stuck as a princess in every film?

Anne: No. I’ve already done several roles that are going to pull me out of this. I get asked that question a lot. I’ve already done a film called Havoc, which is about affluent teenagers from the Pacific Palisades in California who become entranced with East LA gang culture and form a gang so that’s going to shake up the princess image a little bit. Then I’m about to go off and work on Ang Lee’s next movie called Brokeback Mountain. I play Jake Gyllenhaal’s wife, a Texas rodeo queen. I’m so looking forward to it.

AGW: Will you continue on with your singing? You’ve got a nice voice.

Anne: Thank you. Not really. I like to think of the fact that I can sing as a tool that I use for acting. It happened to help me in “Ella”. Singing is something I love but I’m not passionate about. When I do it, it’s just for fun. I don’t want put a price tag on it or pursue it in that way. I have no aspirations of world domination through the pop charts. That’s not me. But I do love musical theater, so hopefully that will be in my future as well.

AGW: How did you end up doing the big musical number in this film?

Anne: There was always a musical number at that moment in the film, at the giants’ wedding. And originally though the character of Slannen was supposed to do it, and we decided that that kind of goes against the whole nature of the film. The whole film is about not being under someone else's will. And so Slannen shouldn't have to do what he doesn't want to do. So they thought, well, another character has to sing, so do you mind doing it? I said, 'actually, yes, I don't really want to.' And so that's when the song happened.

AGW: How did they shoot the scene with you singing and dancing and the giants all around?

Anne: It was shot in two pieces. One, they shot all the giant stuff, and then they shot all the stuff that I did against the blue screen. So I was basically standing on top of a huge tabletop that they had constructed, an enormous 15-foot tall candelabra was right there that I had to avoid knocking into it every time I turned. And yeah, then it comes all together afterwards, in post production.

AGW: Why acting for you? And do you get frustrated with all the attention celebrities get?

Anne: I always dreamed about having good roles. Watching Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice I'm like, 'OK, I want to do that, I definitely want to do that. But I wasn't really interested in sort of the whole secret life of celebrities growing up, so I never even knew that it existed. I was just so focused on acting. And so now that I do know that it exists, it's not really for me. I understand that I'm kind of tied to it, but I don't try to kind of fan those flames at all. I just sort of try to deal with them. You have to have a passion for the craft and for the experience. I think.

AGW: Were you on the set when Julie Andrews sang for Princess Diaries 2? (note: Julie Andrews’ singing voice was damaged a few years ago by a botched throat operation).

Anne: Yeah. She didn't exactly sing, she kind of speak-sings. You know the way the character does in “My Fair Lady”, that's sort of what she does. But, yes, the song was directed at my character. So it's basically three days of staring at Julie Andrews eyes while she was telling me about what a great person I was, holding my hand. It was pretty nice. There are worse ways to make a living.

AGW: So it was pretty emotional for you?

Anne: Oh, my, for everybody. Because just to watch what Julie can put into a song, and a performance, is mind blowing. Everybody got really misty, and it was really nice. Those two days you could hear a pin drop on set because nobody wanted to miss a moment, so it was really special.

AGW: This film is about obeying orders. Did you obey your parents growing up, or were you a rebel?

Anne: I was a very independent little girl. If I felt my parents made sense in what they were asking me to do. I wouldn't just challenge them to be challenging them. But, if I disagreed with something, I was always encouraged to argue my stance, and even if I lost, I would usually go off and do my own thing anyway.

AGW: How did you approach being the character of Ella?

Anne: I just wanted to make Ella as honest as possible. I wanted to make her very likeable. And just imagining how it would feel if you were a naturally free-spirited person, being told you couldn't do what you wanted to do. And just sort of wanting to take that power away from others. With all the physical stuff, I worked with a mime for about two weeks. It's so cool, I know…..not! I took mime lessons, I had to learn how to control my body and make it look like someone else was controlling me. It was hysterical. Because he was trying to get me to do kind of the classic pratfalls, and I was like, I'm not interested in being a mime. I don't see my future in mime..er, mimery? So we stuck to the script.

AGW: How do you see your future?

Anne: I have no clue what's going to happen. So there's no point in thinking about specific events. I have goals. I mean, certainly, I would like to continue acting and I would like to travel and hopefully have a family someday. But at the moment I can't get anymore specific than that.

AGW: What kind of person do you hope to be?

Anne: I hope I'm always passionate and honest and treat people with respect, and that I’m open. And I hope that I always listen to people. And I hope that I develop a tremendous amount of patience, which I'm currently working on but often fail at. Just to be a good person, to never be afraid of things. To be an adventurer and to hopefully not back down from fights and stuff like that.

AGW: When was your first screen kiss?

Anne: My first film kiss was when I was 16. It wasn't a film kiss. I did a TV pilot for Fox, which turned into a series called ‘Get Real.' And I was so scared I was shaking for like two weeks beforehand. But at this point I'm kind of a film kissing alum.

AGW: What kind of music are you into?

Anne: Oh, dear. Eclectic stuff, really. I think it depends what kind of mood I'm in. But I love reggae. Bob Marley is God. The Andy Warhols I'm big on right now. I love the Strokes. I've always been a fan of Bjork. I love her. I love listening to National Public Radio; their eclectic mix is always great. And Sade is great. Jill Scott. The Roots. All over the place. It's good music.

AGW: What is the hardest part of making a film for you?

Anne: Keeping my energy level up. Because I was in pretty much every shot of every scene, and that is a very big deal. You know, just being on the set for like three and a half months, and trying to be a pleasant person to everybody but also having that space to do your job and have a good time doing it. Trying to balance all of that. And then I guess trying to be in Ireland and not indulge in all the beer and the bread, is pretty hard too, it's so good.

AGW: Did you have a favorite fairy tale growing up?

Anne: I did. Actually, I had a bunch, because my parents bought me this huge hard-cover volume of Grimm's Fairy Tales, and I used to stay up late reading them. They're fantastically violent so I used to love reading them with a flashlight to freak myself out. But my favorite, I always loved the ‘Snow Queen’, and I really loved the ‘Fisherman and His Wife’, I thought that was a cool story.

AGW: What are you reading now?

Anne: Right now I just finished this fantastic book called 'Empress Orchid,' and so I'm actually looking for a new book, so right now I'm reading 'Self Reliance' by Emerson. And I'm reading 'Letters to a Poet' by Rilke. They're so, so beautiful, and my friend Therese has been trying to get me to read Rilke for years, and I always forget, whenever I go to the bookstore, to pick him up, and it was just a gift from someone. So it's kind of, it's kismet, literary kismet.

AGW: Are you going to vote in the next election?

Anne: Yes. Right now I'm trying to kind of get to know Rock the Vote and Declare Yourself. Obviously my own personal belief shouldn't influence how I believe that young people need to get out there and vote. How everybody needs to get out there and vote, and become very engaged and aware of what the issues are that are out there. Right now there's a young actress that I've been getting to know named Amber Tamblyn (of “Joan of Arcadia”), and she's starting a little organization for young celebrities, those who are interested in politics or at least being activists so I've been talking to her quite a bit, she's amazing.

AGW: This movie has something in common with the classic Wizard of Oz. Did you think about that?

Anne: To be perfectly honest, I didn't notice it until someone else pointed it out to me when I was about halfway through filming. I think it’s just the whole notion of a young girl going off on a journey. Dorothy is obviously trying to get back home. Ella is trying to rid herself of something unwanted. But both of them have to find, both of them are challenged in ways that they never could had imagined based on what their lives had been like before. And are made much stronger because of the journey, because of what they learn about themselves.

AGW: What are you looking for in a boyfriend?

Anne: What I'm looking for is ultimately someone who, if we were to break up we would want to be best friends for the rest of our lives. That means you find somebody that makes you laugh, and somebody that you have fun getting dressed up and going out dancing with, but you also understand that Sunday afternoons are meant to be spent in sweats and going out for coffee and watching movies and just being silly. Someone you can be silly with and have no problem talking to. That's like the ultimate, ultimate guy, and in the interim I'm just looking for someone to make me think. With all that, too, who likes to read. You know, kind of an artist. It's a tall order, I know, I'm sorry. I better stop myself otherwise I'm going to keep going.

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