Remember the clumsy princess Mia who came to know about her royal status suddenly one day from the runway hit, Disney’s Princess Diaries in 2001. That’s Anne Hathaway, an American and stage actress whose tall and dark haired beauty rose her to fame from her very first big break on screen. Her popularity was such that among teenage kids that she went on to star in few more movies for Disney including the sequel, The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004), before going in for an image makeover with movies like Havoc (2004) and Brokeback Mountain (2006). Her career high film came in the form of The Devil Wears Prada (2006) opposite Meryl Streep, her childhood idol.
Anne Jacqueline Hathaway was born on November 12, 1982 in Brooklyn, New York to Gerald Hathaway, a lawyer, and Kate McCauley, an actress who was inspiration for Hathaway while pursuing acting. She has an older brother, Michael, and a younger brother, Thomas. She is basically form French and Irish descent. Anne had a catholic upbringing which was rooted deep inside such that she even decided to become a nun. But at the age of 15, upon finding out her brother is gay, she let go of the thought because of the narrow minded thinking of her religion in this context. She was however raised in the neighborhood of Short Hills, New Jersey. She completed her graduation from Millburn High School and attended several semesters in Vassar College before transferring to the New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study.
Performing on stage since her high school days, Hathaway was a member of the Barrow Group Theater Company's acting program. She has performed twice as, a soprano in 1998 with the All Eastern U.S. High School Honors Chorus at Carnegie Hall and has performed in plays at Seton Hall Prep in West Orange. This eventually led her winning a part in the short-lived 1999 television series Get Real as it got canceled after just one season.
Career in Movies
Initially, Hathaway’s debut movie was supposed to be The Other Side of Heaven (2001) opposite Christopher Gorham. But before the filming started, she went in for an audition for the lead character in the Garry Marshall-directed The Princess Diaries (2001). Apparently she got selected when she fell off her chair during auditioning and Marshal found her apt for the clumsy, awkward, Princess Mia. With the movie’s success many doors opened up for Anne and her later releases like Nicholas Nickleby (2002) opposite Charlie Hunnam and Jamie Bell, Ella Enchanted (2004) and the sequel to her 2001 hit Princess diaries, promptly titled The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement(2004) soon garnered her the status of the new teen idol. She also earned rave reviews for her immaculate comic timing and screen presence.
Period after 2004 saw an image transition for Hathaway with her appearing less and less in comedies and going in for more adult and mature themes like that of a spoiled socialite in Havoc (2005) where she appeared nude in several scenes. The movie, however, failed to earn her critical appreciation. The same year she voiced a version of Little Red Riding Hood in Hoodwinked (2005), which received generally mixed reviews.
But it took an academy award nominated drama Brokeback Mountain (2005), opposite Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal which depicted a homosexual relationship in the 1960s that raised her into the critics’ eyes. Herein too, she posed nude.
Her next ousting on the box office was Meryl Streep starrer, The Devil Wears Prada (2006), where she played assistant to a powerful fashion magazine editor (Streep). That film has become the highest-grossing film of her career, besides earning her respect among the fashion industry.
In 2007, she would have gone ahead filming for Knocked Up had it not been for a controversial scene which would require using a real video of a woman giving birth to a child. Hathaway firmly refused citing this unnecessary and dropped out from the movie. Later in the middle of the year she was seen as famed writer Jane Auston in the biographic movie, Becoming Jane.
She also got to star as Agent 99 in the screen adaptation of the TV series Get Smart (premiering 2008) and has recently signed onto the Hoodwinked sequel, Hood vs. Evil.
Hathaway besides her love for stage also enjoys interior design and reading. In fact her favorite novel is Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead (1943). Since 2004, Hathaway has been in a relationship with scandal ridden real estate developer Raffaello Follieri.
The dishy actress has proved time and again that within the child like beauty lies an intelligent mind which will lead her to heights of success.
