Oscar Profile #120: Anne Hathaway

Born November 12, 1982 in Brooklyn, New York to an attorney and his actress wife, Anne Jacqueline Hathaway’s mother Kate McCauley Hathaway was Fantine in the first touring version of Les Misérables when Annie was six. The family also moved to Milburn, New Jersey when Annie was six, which is where she grew up. . Her grandfather, Jack McCauley was a beloved Philadelphia radio personality.

Hathaway was raised Catholic with what she considered “really strong values”, and has stated she wanted to be a nun during her childhood. However, she decided against it at the age of 15, after learning her brother, Michael, was gay. She has stated: “I realized my older brother was gay, and I couldn’t support a religion that didn’t support my brother. Now I call myself a nondenominational Christian, because I haven’t found the religion for me.” In 2009 she stated that her religious beliefs are “a work in progress.

Encouraged by her mother, the trained soprano performed in many stage musicals while in high school including Once Upon a Mattress for which she won an award from the Paper Mill Playhouse. She was accepted by the Barrow Group Theatre Company, the first and only teenager to be welcomed into their program.

Hathaway appeared in the TV series Get Real in 1999 and 2000, which led to her being chosen from a group of 500 for the starring role in 2001’s The Princess Diaries. The film became a worldwide box office sensation that established her as a role model for young girls. She continued the trend with such films as 2004’s Ella Enchanted and The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement.

The then twenty-two year-old actress moved into more mature roles with 2005’s Brokeback Mountain while 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada enhanced her reputation as a light comedienne. Her portrayal of Jane Austen in 2007’s Becoming Jane proved she was t as adept at handling period costume drama as she was contemporary roles.

Playing against type as an unsympathetic protagonist in 2008’s Rachel Getting Married brought her the first of two Oscar nominations to date. Her highly anticipated 2010 film, Love and Other Drugs reuniting her with Brokeback Mountain co-star Jake Gyllenhaal was, however, a critical and commercial disappointment. Still as personally popular as ever, she co-hosted the 2010 Academy Awards in February, 2011 with James Franco.

She had two high profile roles in 2012. She was seen first as Selina AKA Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises, then in the role she first watched her mother play a quarter century earlier in the first touring version of Les Misérables, that of the tragic Fantine. Hathaway has won a slew of awards for her performance in the latter and as of now is the odds-on favorite to take home her first Oscar for her first on-screen singing role.

Having just turned thirty in December, 2012, Hathaway is still early in what promises to be a long and successful career.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE PRINCESS DIARIES (2001), directed by Garry Marshall

One of the Disney studio’s most successful live action comedies in recent years, Hathaway’s second, albeit first released, film is a slight by delightfully effervescent comedy teaming her with the legendary Julie Andrews..

Hathaway plays an all-American fifteen year-old girl who is suddenly plucked from obscurity to be groomed for the royal life by her grandmother, the Queen of a mythical country, played by the still enchanting Andrews. The two actresses are a joy to watch together.

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (2005), directed by Ang Lee

Hathaway changed her image with her portrayal of Jake Gyllenhaal’s wife in Ang Lee’s multi-award winning film about gay cowboys Heath Ledger and Gyllenhaal who have a long-lasting relationship despite both being married to women. Ledger, Gyllenhaal and Michelle Williams received the bulk of the kudos, but Hathaway more than holds her own, even appearing in her first nude scene.

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (2006), directed by David Frankel

Hathaway’s idols are Judy Garland and Meryl Streep. Born too late to have known Garland, she got to work with Streep in this box office smash in which she plays the assistant of the fashion world’s most notoriously ruthless and cynical magazine editor.

Streep, Hathaway and Emily Blunt as another assistant are all terrific in the film for which Streep and Blunt received numerous awards recognition.

RACHEL GETTING MARRIED (2008), directed by Jonathan Demme

The critics fell all over this unpleasant little film in which Hathaway plays a recently released mental patient returning home to her sister’s wedding after a ten year absence. Hathaway’s full of tics performance earned her numerous awards and nominations, including her first Oscar nomination so I’m clearly in the minority on this one. I much preferred the Hathaway of the previous year’s Becoming Jane which had the misfortune of coming out at the end of the cycle of period costume dramas that both critics and audiences were losing patience with.

LES MISÉRABLES (2012), directed by Tom Hooper

Ironically the same critics who praised Rachel Getting Married and other films of its ilk with their hand-held shaky cameras poking up into actors’ nostrils were aghast at the close-ups in this beautifully enhanced version of the worldwide stage successs, accusing director Hooper of going to excess with his shots of actors singing. I can’t prove it, but I suspect that most, if not all the complaints are coming from critics who watched the film on TV screens rather than in theatres where the close-ups are not as obvious from a distance.

The stage production based on Victor Hugo’s five volume novel of necessity leaves out a lot of the detail Hugo put into his work. The film remedies this to some extent, filling in some of the gaps in Victor Hugo’s characters’ stories, particularly Hathaway’s Fantine. Her “I Dreamed a Dream” comes at a more interesting place in the narrative and Hathaway sings the song as though her life depends on it. She is enthralling.