- Anne Hathaway admitted she was once asked to kiss 10 men during a screen test role she had been cast in – which she did because she was so young
- She explains how she did the same test differently with her The Idea of You co-star, Nicholas Galitzine
- Hathaway also teased that she was ‘in a good place’ with a sequel to The Princess Diaries – but a The Devil Wears Prada follow-up will ‘probably not’ happen
She’s starred in some of the industry’s biggest rom-coms, including Bride Wars, Ella Enchanted and Love & Other Drugs.
But now Anne Hathaway has opened up about a “gross” screen-test she was required to partake in, which saw her kiss 10 men.
In an interview with V Magazine, the actor, 41, said that in the noughties, “it was considered normal to ask an actor to make out with other actors to test for chemistry. Which is actually the worst way to do it.”
She continued: “I was told, ‘We have 10 guys coming today and you’re cast. 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 gross.
“And I was so young and terribly aware how easy it was to lose everything by being labeled ‘difficult’, so I just pretended I was excited and got on with it. It wasn’t a power play, no one was trying to be awful or hurt me. It was just a very different time and now we know better.”
Hathaway won an Oscar for her role as Fantine in the 2012 musical film Les Misérables, but will return to her rom-com roots in her latest movie, The Idea of You.
She also acts as producer on the new film – which sees her play a single mother who starts a relationship with a boy band pop star, played by Nicholas Galitzine – and told the publication how she did things differently from her own experience.
“We asked each of the actors coming in to choose a song that they felt their character would love, that they would put on to get my character to dance, and then we’d do a short little improv,” Hathaway said. “I was sitting in a chair like we had come in from dinner or a walk or something, we pressed play, and we just started dancing together.”
Galitzine, 29, chose a song by Alabama Shakes, and Hathaway revealed, “I just started smiling.
“And he saw me smile, so he relaxed, and we just started dancing. Nobody was showing off. Nobody was trying to get the gig. We were just in a space dancing. I looked over and Michael Showalter, our director, was beaming. Spark!”
Hathaway also gave much-anticipated updates about two of her fans’ favourite movies – The Princess Diaries, and The Devil Wears Prada.
Telling the magazine that the latter would “probably not” be happening, she explained, “We all love each other and if somebody could come up with a way to do it, I think we’d all be crazy not to. But there’s a huge difference in the world now with technology, and one of the things about that particular story is it was about producing a physical object. Now with so much being digital, it would just be very different. Maybe me, Stanley, Emily, Meryl, Dave Frankel, Patricia Field…we should just all do something else together. That’d be fun.”
But she said of the third instalment of The Princess Diaries, which she starred in with Hollywood legend Julie Andrews, “We’re in a good place,” she said. “That’s all I can say. There’s nothing to announce yet. But we’re in a good place.”
