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JSE Hollywood princess
March 13, 2009 Edition 1
James Mottram
You MIGHT expect the star of The Devil Wears Prada to arrive with a fabulous, designer-clad flourish. But Anne Hathaway opted for a rather low-key ensemble. Wearing black shorts, sandals and a cream T-shirt decorated with a sprinkling of gold flecks, it puts her at odds with our surroundings, the faded grandeur of Venice's Hotel Des Bains.
To be specific, we're in a dingy ballroom that feels as if an interior from the Titanic has washed ashore, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by the actress.
"I feel like Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio are about to burst through the window on a tidal wave," she grins. "So if that happens please warn me."
Though she lost out to Winslet at the Oscars, Hathaway's first Academy Award nomination was for Rachel Getting Married.
Playing Kym, a self-centred, recovering drug addict who arrives at her sister's wedding with all the grace of a wrecking ball, Rachel Getting Married finally puts to bed the oh-so-squeaky-clean image Hathaway has inadvertently cultivated for herself since she made her film debut in 2001's The Princess Diaries.
Aided by her raccoon-like brown eyes, plump lips and skin so pale it'd make Snow White curse, her role as the San Francisco teen who discovers she's European royalty turned her into a Hollywood princess.
Yet despite completing the 2004 sequel, Hathaway claims she never felt "oppressed" by the film or how it made her look. "I never said, 'I have an image to break away from'," she states.
That said, there have been attempts to get down and dirty.
Her turn as a rebellious rich kid in the lamentable Havoc, and as Jake Gyllenhaal's cowgirl wife in Ang Lee's celebrated Brokeback Mountain (both 2005), saw her go topless - though she makes no apologies for sullying her regal image.
"You have to understand that I don't go around introducing myself, saying, 'Hi, I'm America's sweetheart.' That is not how I think of myself," she says. "I just think of myself as a young actress who has a lot to learn and wants to tell a lot of different stories."
Directed by Jonathan Demme (best known for The Silence of the Lambs), Rachel Getting Married offers Hathaway a killer role that, whatever she says, must be seen as a turning point in her career.
It's a heart-on-the-sleeve performance with the same compelling potency as that of Charlize Theron as the serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster, or Angelina Jolie as the rebellious inmate in Girl, Interrupted.
While the film barely touches on Kym's past problems, Hathaway did her research, reading books, going to Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings and even keeping a journal in character. "One of the things I love about this movie is that everyone has a Kym in their lives. It's not something they necessarily talk about, it's a private matter, but everyone I know knows someone in recovery. It is something we all have a context for and an experience of."
A red-letter year it may have been in her career, but the past 12 months in her private life have been troubled, to say the least. Last June, after four years together, she finally split from the Italian-born real-estate developer Raffaello Follieri, just two weeks before he was arrested for the second time in two months.
Accused of posing as the Vatican's representative in America, duping investors into believing the church would sell him property at a discount, he was subsequently jailed in October for four-and-a-half years, after pleading guilty to 14 counts of wire fraud, conspiracy and money-laundering.
Understandably, Hathaway was keen to move on quickly. The month Follieri was jailed, she began dating 27-year-old actor Adam Shulman, who is best known for his part in the NBC drama series American Dreams.
The daughter of stage actress Kate McCauley and attorney Gerald Hathaway, the actress has evidently benefited from being part of a tight-knit family unit. Hathaway's parents urged her to take classes and develop a love for the theatre, which she fostered in various high-school plays. By the time she was 13, she was auditioning for commercials, though she didn't make her TV debut until 1999 in the family saga Get Real.
The series was cancelled after just one season, but it barely mattered; within months Hathaway was cast in The Princess Diaries.
Though following it with the Cinderella-themed Ella Enchanted was hardly imaginative, Hathaway has never been afraid of a challenge. Think of her rapping in Havoc, playing an action heroine in last year's spy-comedy Get Smart, or going head to head with Streep in her biggest smash to date, The Devil Wears Prada.
She even took on the title role in the literary biopic Becoming Jane, risking the wrath of Austen fanatics.
"That is a difficult film for me to talk about because I feel I just didn't nail it," she admits.
"There is something else I could have done with the character that would have been better, but anyway… "
Like what, I ask, as she tails off.
"I just felt there were a couple of scenes where I was acting too much."
Indeed, there are times when Hathaway can come across this way in real life, too - particularly when she's telling you how ordinary she is.
"I can blend in very easily," she claims. "I have never been the kind of person who attracts attention and I'm still not - I'm by nature a wallflower, someone who hangs back and observes. It takes people a while to notice me."
Hathaway is nevertheless prone to contradictory statements. One minute she'll tell you designer labels are "not the be-all of life". The next, she'll admit, "I'm irrational when it comes to Chanel."
As a statement, given that she's the face for the cosmetics giant Lancôme, it feels as hollow as the answer she gives when I ask if she ever worried that people would be watching her every sartorial choice after making The Devil Wears Prada.
"Oh, I let my stylist worry about that, which must be the most fabulous thing I've ever said!" she gushes.
"Please when you write it say I waved my hand or tossed my head or did something like that!"
There's something of the politician about Hathaway in the way she micro-manages her image. Demme calls her "keenly intelligent" and he's not wrong.
She seems forever just one step ahead. Certainly, after splitting with Follieri in the midst of his troubles her reputation remains intact.
As for her career, she knows she's got some credit in the bank.
"That's the greatest thing about finding success … I'm at a point that it's not just hanging on a single film. You've always got a bit of leeway - like I'm probably three failures away from slipping backwards!"
This may be true - but there's no way Hathaway's going to let this life go now she has a taste for it. - The Independent
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