Naked Ambition
Shaking off her girl-next-door image, anne hathaway reveals Her passions and why she bares all in her moving new film
WORDS | ELAINE LIPWORTH
PORTRAIT | JACK CHUCK / CORBIS OUTLINE
ANNE HATHAWAY POSSESSES A MESMERISING BEAUTY. When we meet over lunch, she’s not wearing any make-up. With Bambi eyes, velvety skin and voluptuous lips, she is luminous in the pale, wintry light – and, unlike many Hollywood actresses, just as beautiful in the flesh.
“Stop it,” she screams, laughing, hands over her face when I tell her how gorgeous she looks. She flushes and swigs furiously from her glass of water: perfect comic timing sprinkled with modesty.
For a young actress, Hathaway has already forged a formidable career. Her dazzling teenage debut, The Princess Diaries, a decade ago was followed by a series of tiara flicks, after which the actress gradually turned her on-screen trademark innocence on its head. She received critical praise for her role opposite Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, followed by her understated performance as Jane Austen in Becoming Jane. Then Ang Lee cast her in Brokeback Mountain with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. She played the bitter, long-suffering rodeo-queen wife of Gyllenhaal’s closeted cowboy.
“I had given up on myself as an actress at that point,” she says. “I didn’t think I was any good. I felt lost and didn’t know how to communicate with people. And then to be cast as a character who had nothing to do with who I was and to do it in the company of people like Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Williams was huge.”
At 28, Hathaway is about to add a new twist to her acting résumé with Love and Other Drugs – a love story, in which she once again stars with Gyllenhaal. “I’ve made a lot of romances but at the moment I’m more interested in the dramatic side of love,” she says. “I seek out risks. I don’t do it to set myself apart, but because it’s what I am drawn to. I want to tell stories that move people, or at least entertain them. I’ve been handed extraordinary opportunities. I feel gratitude and a sense of privilege that I’m a young actress who can choose her parts. Of course, that means there is a greater risk of failing.”
A thrilling blend of sharp comedy and moving drama from director Ed Zwick (Blood Diamond, The Last Samurai), Love and Other Drugs revolves around intimate scenes between two complex, damaged characters. Set in the 90s and loosely based on the autobiographical bestseller Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman by Jamie Reidy, the film is about Reidy’s experiences working in the murky, cut-throat pharmaceutical industry. It b is an original, thought-provoking exploration of love and desire, after a no-strings-attached relationship between the voracious Viagra salesman and a gravely ill young woman develops unexpectedly into love. The part demanded considerable physical and emotional challenges for Hathaway.
She says she has waived her nudity rider, the standard agreement that most actresses insist on, specifying what can and cannot be shown. “We believed that there should be nudity in the movie because these are two people who become physically intimate quickly, but emotional intimacy doesn’t happen until well into their relationship,” she explains. “With most film couples it is the reverse of that. I sat down with Jake and the director and said: ‘I trust that you’re both gentlemen and aren’t going to be exploitative of the situation. Please give Jake and I the final say over the nudity and let’s make it as organic as possible’. So that is what we did.
“During the love scenes, we would talk about books, music. He would never want me to admit this, but Jake loves musical theatre. So we would discuss that. It was very innocent and asexual.”
I can’t resist raising an eyebrow. “He is gorgeous,” concurs Hathaway, who first acted in intimate scenes with Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain. “And we were both in relationships at the time. You learn very early on to keep all that stuff clear in your mind.”
She is sunny and engaging, chattering away: “Look, I’m going to be honest here, so you really get the picture. Most women would relate to this. You get there in the morning, get your hair and make-up done. And then I would go into my trailer and a make-up artist would put body make-up on me. There was usually about 20 minutes before we had to be on set, so I would compulsively do sit-ups and push-ups until they needed me. You go out in your robe, rehearse the scene clothed and they clear the set so anyone that is non-essential b leaves. Then you just get on with it.”
Hathaway says that she isn’t concerned about her boyfriend, actor Adam Shulman’s response to the film. “I’m not worried about the boyfriend. I’m dating him because he likes what I do for a living. I’m an actress and I want to push myself as far as I can. I love that he supports that.
“My mom and my dad…” she falters for a moment, “I knew that they wouldn’t love it, but I also knew that the reason I am so comfortable is that they allowed me to watch movies that showed naked bodies when I was a kid. So it never struck me as anything odd or noteworthy. I watched All That Jazz when I was eight years old. I b think Americans are surprisingly sexual, despite a perceived prudishness. I am also excited about b showing a girl on screen who doesn’t have that kind of shame.”
She glances out the window at the gloomy overcast day from her suite at the Ritz-Carlton, watching the leaves swirling around Central Park. Hathaway could have stepped out of the pages of Vogue. She is wearing a striped top tucked into high-waisted, cropped 50s-style jeans and towering maroon Prada shoes. She is slim, not pencil thin; when I first entered the room she was just finishing an egg sandwich and chips.
Is there a lot of pressure for young actresses to maintain the perfect figure off screen as well as on? “I haven’t got the perfect figure,” she says firmly, leading me to suspect that she might prefer to be discussing more cerebral matters. A former literature student of both Vassar and New York University, she is, after all, well read and fabulously articulate.
“I’m healthy and happy things are fine,” she says of her curvier new figure. Her recent weight gain is to play Emma Morley in One Day (based on David Nichol’s bestseller). “I like what my body does and the way it feels. For me, beauty is connected to intelligence and thought and personality. I think we’re moving away from the idea that there is only one way to look. Oddly enough, the TV series Mad Men has done a wonderful thing for women by showing what women’s bodies really look like. We kind of forgot because we have been encouraged b to manipulate our bodies for so many years to pursue one ideal. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realised that being skinny is just not sustainable, nor enjoyable.”
After reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals, she’s recently returned to vegetarianism. “I’ve been a commitment-shy vegetarian since I was about 12,” she explains. “Then this summer I just didn’t want to eat meat any more, although I was still eating fish. And when I was sent a copy of Eating Animals that was it for me in terms of being able to eat fish – which is a shame because I enjoy the taste, but I can’t support the cruelty and the way fish are farmed and caught. Go ahead and read the book, but b be warned it’s a blue pill/red pill situation. There’s no going back.
“I’m a natural worrier,” she confides, “so I have to pick and choose what I’m going to worry about. Some time ago I made a decision that my figure is not going to be something I worry about. I am human, so occasionally I look in the mirror and think, ‘Oh why have I not been to the gym in six weeks because it does make a difference.’ But I don’t get obsessed with it.”
Of more interest to Hathaway was getting under the skin of her 26-year-old character in Love and Other Drugs, who is coping with a diagnosis of early onset Parkinson’s disease. “I found it terrifying, the idea of taking something as difficult as having Parkinson’s disease and trying to find a way to honour the people who had been so generous in teaching me about it.
“First of all, you have to understand the character because she is not a disease, she’s a person. So I had to think about who she was and how she would respond to the news that she has a terminal illness that is going to take away b her control over her body. Like most young women, she has probably taken her health for granted. I spent a long time researching Parkinson’s and talking to medical professionals and people with the disease. Parkinson’s drugs wind up keeping you very thin in a sinewy sort of way, so that was the body I had to create and I worked hard to get it; it’s not my natural physique.
“I decided to focus on my character’s denial. She is b terrified of letting someone into her life because she hasn’t been able to accept herself. She wants to focus on her youth and she retreats from her own humanity. She needs to be in control of her world and that involves inviting in men who she knows she can control. What she doesn’t count on is falling in love with one of them.”
Ostensibly, there doesn’t appear to be anything in Hathaway’s childhood that prepared her for such complexity. But she studied acting from an early age and came from a literary, educated family (the Shakespeare-inspired name was intentional). She was raised in New Jersey with her older brother, Michael, and younger brother, Thomas. Her father, Gerald Hathaway, is a lawyer, and her mother, Kate McCauley, is an actress. “I thought I would be a stage actress like my mother and dreamed of playing Hedda Gabler. Growing up, I think I was kind of weird; I loved being different people in my imagination. I was Wendy from Peter Pan or Mary Lennox from The Secret Garden. I fell in love with stories and tried to imagine myself in them. I didn’t think about the future and never dreamed of being in movies.”
Yet despite all her early achievements and a happy family life, as a teenager Hathaway suffered from depression. “I had a loving childhood. My parents are two of the most supportive people you could ever want. Was it a stress-free childhood? No, there were a lot of issues going on that I won’t go into. But I never doubted that my brothers and I were at the centre of my parents’ world. They’ve been together 30 years.”
The family were church-going Catholics and raised with what she considers “really strong values”. Other than the surprising teenage declaration that at one point she wanted to become a nun, the most dramatic event in the Hathaway household was when her brother Mike came out. This caused conflicts because of Catholicism’s intolerance of homosexuality. Ultimately, the entire family left the Roman Catholic Church. “It was something that naturally evolved. After a few months, we realised that we had all begun to go to different churches. I was in college at the time and was beginning to explore different religions anyway. I went home to see my parents and we visited the local episcopalian church. I’m still exploring the teachings of other religions.”
Did any of her family have difficulty adjusting to her brother’s homosexuality? “Our collective response was ‘we love you and so what’,” she says. “We were obviously supportive but it wasn’t like a gung-ho new identity. He was still Mike. It was simply a new, more specific detail of who he was. It became a much bigger issue when Mike wanted to marry his partner. He could only get married in Canada, so we had a commitment ceremony in New York. You have to accept that it’s discrimination – whatever your feelings b about gay marriage. It’s a human-rights issue in addition to being a personal issue for me. I will fight to make sure my brother gets the same rights as me because it’s appalling in this day and age with everything we know.”
Hathaway looks thoughtful. Loyalty, equality, justice – as well as spirituality – are obviously deeply rooted in her and integral to who she is.
She is notoriously private about discussing her own relationships. She split in 2008 from her long-term boyfriend Raffaello Follieri, a 32-year-old Italian entrepreneur who has been jailed on fraud and money-laundering charges. When the scandal broke, she handled the situation with grace and even joked about it on a TV talk show: “You have to give me credit, because as far as relationships crashing and burning go, c’mon I did pretty great.”
Hathaway – usually so loquacious with words tumbling as she attempts to capture her thoughts – looks uneasy. “You fall in love when you fall in love.
Oh, this is too personal,” she says, with a drawn-out sigh. “I hate talking about the break-up, because I don’t want it to define me. It feels like another lifetime ago.
“I think I’ve learned to be more wary and also that a bad love experience is no reason to fear a new love experience,” she continues, evasively, with the wisdom of someone who has simultaneously endured the highs of Hollywood and personal lows. “Within every crisis there is an opportunity and you just have to not lose faith. I’ve always believed in people’s capacity for goodness. I still believe that people are good. The best way to let yourself b feel better is to let yourself feel bad. And the best way to get through a hard time is to invite someone else into your life; to let yourself lean on someone. When I get down, anything funny makes me feel better. Sometimes it’s going to a yoga class or drinking a vodka tonic – just trying to find a balance.
“I have a normal life, nothing special, where I go through the same stuff as everybody else. I’m living in a new place and have a backyard for the first time in ages. I raked leaves this morning and that made me so happy. Right now, I’m setting up a home and playing with my dog Esmeralda. I’m learning to cook and play the guitar. I want to live a bit, to hang out with my friends and travel. I have a gypsy wanderlust. And I try to make time to do charity work and I read a lot. I am a curiosity junkie.”
At some point, she says, she would like to finish her literature degree at NYU, which she abandoned for The Devil Wears Prada. Charity work is a priority for Hathaway too. She has been involved with the Step Up Women’s Network, a foundation created to strengthen community resources for women and girls.
Life is exciting for Hathaway – who is courted by the cream of Hollywood’s directors such as Ed Zwick and Ang Lee. An Education director Lone Scherfig cast her in One Day, choosing her over dozens of talented British actresses. She has just returned from filming in London when we meet. “It was a beautiful few months,” she enthuses. “I was living in Notting Hill and loved b the rhythm of life. I had a night out with some of the girls from the costume department and my brother was in town, so he came too and we went to this place called the Palm Tree in East London. I fell in love with the East End around Shoreditch and Columbia Road. It has such great creative energy.”
Where does boyfriend Adam Schulman fit into her packed schedule? “Adam has been assistant directing a play, so he’s been working more than I have. So right now it’s about just finding time together between our two busy schedules and having patience till the day when the project will be finished.” She met Schulman through mutual friends and, she says, they “hit it off immediately, but it took us a pretty long time to get together. Our favourite thing to do is to literally be in the same room. But we do a lot of different things. I suppose that’s why we are dating because, whatever we do together, it feels like a wonderful thing.
“You know,” she says, momentarily serious again. “I think if there’s anything I’ve learnt over the years, and in particular making this film, it’s to really pick and choose what it is that you have to worry about. Life is short. God bless the good moments. Enjoy them.”
Love and Other Drugs is out now
