Early in her career, Anne Hathaway said she didn't want to be labeled “difficult,” so she accepted some of the craziness that the Hollywood audition process threw at her.
One of those things, the “Les Miserables” Oscar winner said, involved chemistry tests that required her to kiss several actors. It was a “normal” request, she said, but “disgusting” and an outdated relic of the pre-#MeToo era.
“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 “Idea of Thrones” star said. “You”. the producer recently told V magazine. “They told me: 'Today ten guys come and you're chosen. Aren't you excited to make out with all of them? And I thought, 'Is there something wrong with me?' because I wasn't excited. I thought it sounded disgusting.”
The 41-year-old said she was “so young and terribly aware of how easy it was to lose everything by being labeled 'difficult',” so she pretended to be excited “and moved on.”
“It wasn't a power play, no one was trying to be mean or hurt me. It was just a very different time and we know better now,” she said.
Now a producer, “The Princess Diaries” and “The Devil Wears Prada” alum said she went about the audition process differently for her chemistry-filled Prime Video film “The Idea of You.” , an adaptation of Robinne Lee's 2017 romance novel that is set at a music festival. Hathaway opted to have the actors choose a song they felt her character would love and play it to make Hathaway's character, Solène Marchand, dance. Then they did “a brief improvisation.”
“I was sitting in a chair like we came back from dinner or a walk or something, and we pressed play and started dancing together,” Nicholas Galitzine, 29, said of her co-star. The “Cinderella” and “Bottoms” star played the Alabama Shakes, got Hathaway to react, and they went from there.
“[I]It was just easy. I have heard [lead singer] Brittany's voice and I just started smiling. And she saw me smile, so she relaxed and we started dancing. Nobody showed off. Nobody was trying to get the job. We were just in a space dancing. I looked over and Michael Showalter, our director, was smiling. Spark – spark!”
Hathaway credits late director Garry Marshall for inviting her into the filmmaking process. The “Pretty Woman” and “Laverne & Shirley” filmmaker, who directed Hathaway's 2001 fish-out-of-water comedy “The Princess Diaries,” appreciated his 17-year-old star's “vision of being a teenager.”
“[Marshall] It elevated me to such a valued status on set that it never occurred to me that on other sets I didn't have the same autonomy or the same ability to collaborate. I always wanted to be nice. But I also always thought that having strong opinions meant I was doing my job,” he added.
As for the status of a third installment of the beloved franchise? Hathaway offered some hope to longtime fans of her American teenager-turned-princess of Genovia.
“We're in a good place,” he said of the likelihood of making another movie. “That's all I can say. There's nothing to announce yet. But we're in a good place.”
