In the 2000s, the acting career of Anne Hathaway (New York, 41 years old) was in full swing. In 2001 she starred Princess by surprise, In 2004 he released the sequel to the film that made him famous when he was barely 17 years old, and in that decade he also took on key roles in his career, such as Andy Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada (2006) or Jane Austen’s in Young Jane Austen (2007). It was a great decade for her, but it also holds unpleasant memories. Like having to kiss a dozen men, one after the other, under the watchful eye of some film directors. casting. “In the 2000s, and this happened to me, it was considered normal to ask an actor to kiss other actors to test chemistry, which is actually the worst way to do it,” the interpreter acknowledged in a new interview with V Magazine.
After more than 20 years of career and an Oscar for best supporting actress for The MiserablesHathaway now feels free to openly criticize these supposed chemistry tests of the Hollywood of its beginnings. “They told me: ‘We have 10 guys coming today and you’re already in the cast. Aren’t you excited to make out with all of them?’ And I thought, ‘Is there something wrong with me?’, because she wasn’t excited. I thought it sounded gross. And I was young and terribly aware of how easy it was to lose everything by being labeled ‘difficult’. So I pretended I was excited and moved on. It wasn’t a power play, no one was trying to be horrible or hurt me. It was a very different time and now we know that is not the case,” she confesses, without giving the name of the film in which they put her through it.
Now it is she herself who produces and stars in films such as the romantic comedy The idea of having you, which premieres on Prime Video on May 2 and for which it has lately grabbed headlines and magazine covers for being in full promotion. In the film, Hathaway plays a 40-year-old divorced mother who takes her teenage daughter to the Coachella festival and ends up entering into a secret romance with the 24-year-old singer of the band. boy band of the moment. In this case, it was she who decided how to find the ideal boy for the role in the casting process. casting. And it was clear to me that finding that spark didn’t require making out with a group of twenty-somethings. “We asked each of the actors to choose a song that they felt her character would love, that they would play to make my character dance, and then we would do a little improvisation. She was sitting in a chair as if we had just come from dinner or a walk or something, we hit the button. play and we started dancing together.”
This is how she found Nicholas Galitzine (London, 29 years old), her co-star in the film. She chose a song by the American band Alabama Shakes. “I heard Brittany’s voice [la cantante principal de Alabama Shakes] and I started to smile. And she saw me smile, so she relaxed and we started dancing. Nobody showed off. Nobody was trying to get the job. We were in a space dancing. I looked up and Michael Showalter, our director, was beaming. “Spark!”, the actress of Interstellar.
In November 2023, Hathaway admitted in an interview with porter that he was once warned that his career would not last long after he turned 35. “When I started out as a little girl, I was warned that my career would fall off a cliff at the age of 35, which is something I know a lot of women face,” she lamented at the time. “What has evolved over that time is that more and more women are having deeper careers in their lives, which I think is fantastic,” she added. At that time, at 40 years old, she was preparing to star in the adaptation of Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel Eileenin which she played an impetuous and condescending prison psychologist.
When the official trailer for The idea of having you, many users on social networks celebrated the casting, especially the choice of Anne Hathaway. Others criticized her. “How disgusting it makes me see her acting with someone who looks 20 years younger than her,” https://twitter.com/ts912celes/status/1765408675319910650?s=20. The one who no longer feels disgust is Hathaway, for whom those 20 years of experience have helped her stop fearing losing everything by not doing what she doesn’t want to do.
