Anne Hathaway

VOGUE PERSONALITIES

VOGUEPEDIA

Halfway through Anne Hathaway’s celebrity timeline—between 2001’s The Princess Diaries, which made her a star (at least among the tween set), and 2012’s Les Misérables, which had Hugh Jackman declaring her Fantine worthy of an Oscar—came the young actress’s fashion-breakthrough year: 2008. Featured for the first time on the cover of Vogue, Hathaway had come a long way from her rather-less-than-glamorous New Jersey roots. Sounding a lot like the naïve assistant she played in the megahit The Devil Wears Prada, Hathaway revealed to the magazine that her lack of style savvy could be attributed to having grown up in an upper middle class household where “spending a lot of money on clothes was not respected.”^[1] Now that she had been named one of Vogue’s 10 Best Dressed, Hathaway explained, she had learned to trust her instincts and “see fashion as something that could liberate you rather than define you in a negative way.”^[2]

Learning to trust herself was a process born in the wake of her disastrous four-year relationship with Raffaello Follieri, a man—convicted of fraud and money-laundering in the Vati-Con scandal, not long after their breakup—“whose main distinction,” observed Vogue, “seems to have been a desire to ape the lifestyles of the rich and famous.”^[3] Throwing out all the clothes and other things that reminded her of their time together, Hathaway struggled to rediscover her style and herself: “I realized that the past five years of my life had been spent accumulating things I like but never asked if I love.” Of her new wardrobe selections, and perhaps hinting at her reexamined romantic expectations, she told Vogue, “I’m looking for a pared-down truth.”^[4]

By the time her third Vogue cover story appeared, in December 2012, the newly vegan actress had honed her physique to play a sexy but bruising Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises, and then had her luxurious chestnut locks shorn for her portrayal of the fallen, dying Fantine in Les Misérables. Meanwhile, in her private life, she had quietly found a gem: an actor turned jewelry designer named Adam Shulman, her “true love—the full-on romantic, till-death-do-us-part real deal.”^[5] When Adam Green, the writer of the cover story, inquired about the wedding date, Hathaway told him it wouldn’t be for at least another year. Only four days later, paparazzi pics were published of the bride atop the spectacular cliffs of Big Sur where the secret ceremony took place, in a fairy-tale gown that her friend Valentino had designed especially for her. “I’m turning 30, and—I hope this isn’t obnoxious to say,” Hathaway confessed, “I feel prettier, and I feel much more myself. I guess I just feel much more satisfied with less now.”^[6]

HISTORY

1982

Anne Jacqueline Hathaway born in Brooklyn, New York, to lawyer Gerald Thomas Hathaway and actress Kate McCauley. She is of mostly Irish and French ancestry, with a smattering of Native American and German. She shares her name with an even more famous Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s wife.

1986

As a preschooler, attends Brooklyn Heights Montessori School.

1988

The family, including older brother Michael and younger brother Thomas, moves to Millburn, New Jersey, when Anne is six.

1989

At the age of seven, watches her mother play Fantine in a touring production of Les Misérables. “I’ll never forget it—I just sat there sobbing,”^[7] she later tells Vogue.

1997

Raised Catholic and having dreamed as a child of becoming a nun, Hathaway at fifteen rejects the faith when she finds out her brother Michael is gay. “The whole family converted to Episcopalianism after my elder brother came out,” she will later tell British GQ. “Why should I support an organization that has a limited view of my beloved brother?”^[8]

1999

Graduates from Millburn High School, having won a Paper Mill Playhouse Rising Star Award for her first princess role, in Once Upon a Mattress; and having performed at Carnegie Hall with the All-Eastern U.S. High School Honors Choir.

2000

Enrolls at Vassar as an English major (with a minor in women’s studies). Later, she will attend NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study and become the first teenager to be admitted into the acting program of New York’s Barrow Group Theatre Company.

2001

Cast in her first movie, The Other Side of Heaven. During a flight layover on her way to filming in New Zealand, auditions for another Disney production, director Garry Marshall’s The Princess Diaries. Wins the role over 500 other hopefuls. The movie is a runaway hit. The Other Side of Heaven is released after Diaries to capitalize on Hathaway’s leap to fame. She is named one of People magazine’s breakout stars of the year.

2002

Family-oriented film roles over the next few years include Nicholas Nickleby, Ella Enchanted, and The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, which earns $95.1 million against a $40 million budget (despite negative reviews).

2005

Appears in more mature material—as a spoiled socialite (with nude scenes) in Havoc, and a rodeo princess opposite Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain. Makes her first appearance in Vogue, wearing Vera Wang in a Talking Fashion page spotlighting the CFDA Womenswear Designer of the Year.

2006

Stars opposite Meryl Streep in the smash comedy hit The Devil Wears Prada. Becomes fast friends with Streep, her idol.

2007

Plays English novelist Jane Austen in Becoming Jane. Despite being “too pretty for the role,” reports Vogue, “Hathaway wins us over, touching our hearts in the melancholy coda when Jane finally learns a truth universally acknowledged: It’s far easier to put happy endings in a novel than to achieve them in real life.”^[9]

2008

Garners critical acclaim for her performance as a narcissistic addict in Rachel Getting Married.

2009

January: Appears on her first Vogue cover, alongside the headline “Anne Hathaway: From Personal Heartbreak to Professional Triumph.” In Bride Wars, plays romantic rival and BFF to Kate Hudson, who describes Hathaway’s appeal: “She’s a mix between a thoroughbred—totally focused, on it, and in it—and a platypus, this quirky, funny, simple animal.”^[10] February: Impresses Hollywood royalty with her Oscar-night song-and-dance routine with Hugh Jackman, her future costar in Les Misérables.

2010

Armed guards keep an eye on the dazzlingly lavish jewelry she wears on the Parisian set of her second Vogue cover and fashion portfolio, by photographer Mario Testino. “It was true glamour,” she says. “Not just the clothes and the jewels but that feeling that glamour can produce in you, which is like a dream.”^[11]

2011

Performs a knockout rendition of “She’s Me Pal” for Meryl Streep and the president and First Lady at the Kennedy Center Honors, alongside Kevin Kline, Stanley Tucci, and Emily Blunt.

2012

July: In her ultrasleek catsuit, looms large—alongside a beefy Christian Bale and a masked Tom Hardy—on Times Square billboards for The Dark Knight Rises. August: “I got a chance to see Batman,” President Obama tells reporters, “and she was the best thing in it.”^[12] December: In “Leap of Faith,” her third Vogue cover story, Les Mis director Tom Hooper recalls Hathaway’s insistence on auditioning to play Fantine, even though producers didn’t want to see her because she was too young for the part: “It was little short of astonishing, one of the greatest auditions I’ve ever had the privilege to witness.”^[13]

2013

January: Wins a Golden Globe for her role as Fantine in Les Misérables. February: Accepts an Oscar for the performance, wearing a Prada pale-pink satin column. May: Turns her pixie crop platinum for the Met's Costume Institute ball, where she takes to the museum steps in sheer vintage Valentino couture.

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