Anne Hathaway's allure is split three-ways: young girls view her as a role model (or the characters she plays in films, anyway), she meets with parental approval, and she ticks all the boxes as the thinking man's perfect girlfriend -- intelligent, talented, attractive, down-to-earth and successful.
Her breakthrough came in live-action Disney film The Princess Diaries (2001), where she endeared herself to director Garry Marshall in her audition by falling off a chair! In the film, she played a gawky American schoolgirl who becomes the heir to a European throne and must be trained for royal duties by Julie Andrews. It was the perfect fit for Hathaway, as her character's blossoming from clumsy girl-next-door to princess utilized Hathaway's own mix of slightly-gawky everygirl and enchanting dreamgirl...
The film was a surprise hit with audiences and critics, but Hathaway quickly found herself typecast as a "child actor" at the age of 19! Nicholas Nickleby (2002) was a box-office bomb, but her performance was lauded in many reviews. Her next film was Ella Enchanted (2004), a fairy tale adventure that opened to mixed reviews and cemented Hathaway's reputation as a pretty "Disney Princess". The film didn't make back its $28 million budget at the box-office, but healthy DVD sales ensured it made a profit.
She sadly missed out on starring in Joel Schumacher's The Phantom Of The Opera, because of her contract with Disney, and instead starred in Princess Diaries 2 (2004) – which was a success, but didn't better the first film's performance, and was less-favourably reviewed.
Clearly facing a career crisis (too many Disney/fairy-tale films!), Hathaway made a bold move by starring in Havoc (2005), in a role as a "streetwise" teen that required her to perform sex scenes, before also appearing nude in Brokeback Mountain that same year. Both films didn't succeed or fail based on Hathaway's appearances, but her departure from family-friendly material had people sitting up and taking note...
Her biggest success to date came with The Devil Wears Prada (2006), working alongside Meryl Streep (her childhood idol). It was a "chick flick" that connected with people around the world, becoming one of the year's sleeper hits, and helped open up Hathaway to a wider audience – while still essentially targeting the teens who had made Princess Diaries a smash.
She turned down the Katherine Heigl role in Knocked Up, over concerns about director Judd Apatow using footage of a real woman's vagina during the birthing scene. Instead, she starred as Jane Austen in Becoming Jane (2007) alongside James McAvoy. Despite being American, her "Englishness" (in name, looks and career choices) has always followed her around, so playing one of English literatures most famous women (the creator of women's romantic fiction in many respects) was another perfect fit.
Hathaway turned down the role of Johanna is another screen musical (Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd), she tackled her first big-budget project, co-starring in Get Smart with Steve Carell as the sexy, high-kicking Agent 99. The comedy is due out this summer and will hopefully make her a household name with people who don't watch Disney comedies and rom-coms. Also in 2008, she will headline the thriller Passengers, as a grief counsellor working with plane crash survivors – another stab at "serious" films since Havoc and Brokeback. She's currently filming Bride Wars (a rom-com about competing brides) and the comedy Dancing With Shiva from director Jonathan Demme.
Whatever she does, I find Anne Hathaway incredibly watchable and a very endearing presence at the movies. She has a ravishing smile, good looks, sexy body, and an element of Hollywood Golden Age glamour – but is also pleasantly flawed, a bit awkward, and just refreshingly "normal". You can relate to her, and she doesn't have that "distance" a lot of Hollywood's glamorous girls hide behind. It's that normality that makes kids, parents and people of all ages warm to her, in an age of superficial actors and falseness.
A true Hollywood princess.
Name: Anne Jacqueline HathawayBirthdate: 12 November 1982
Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York, USA
