Anne Hathaway

Anne Jacqueline Hathaway (born November 12, 1982) is an American actress. After several stage roles, she appeared in the 1999 television series Get Real. She came to prominence after playing Mia Thermopolis in the Disney film The Princess Diaries (2001) and in its 2004 sequel. Since then, Hathaway has starred in dramatic films such as Havoc and Brokeback Mountain, in 2005. She has also starred in The Devil Wears Prada (2006) with Meryl Streep and in Becoming Jane (2007) as Jane Austen. In 2008, she won several awards for her performance in Rachel Getting Married and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. In 2010, she starred in the box office hits Valentine's Day, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, and Love and Other Drugs and won an Emmy Award for her voice-over performance on The Simpsons. In 2011, she had a voice role in the animated film Rio, and starred in Lone Scherfig's adaptation of One Day. In 2012, she portrayed Selina Kyle in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises and Fantine in Tom Hooper's Les Misérables. Her performance in the latter earned her rave reviews and several accolades, including the Golden Globe Award, the Screen Actors Guild Award, the BAFTA Award and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. People magazine named her one of its breakthrough stars of 2001, and she appeared on its list of the world's 50 Most Beautiful People in 2006. Early life Anne Hathaway was born November 12, 1982 in Brooklyn, New York. Her father, Gerald Thomas Hathaway, is a lawyer, and her mother, Kathleen Ann "Kate" (née McCauley), is an actress who inspired Hathaway to follow in her footsteps. Hathaway's mother played Fantinein the first U.S. tour of Les Misérables. When she was six years old, the family moved to Millburn, New Jersey, which is where she grew up. Hathaway has an older brother, Michael, and a younger brother, Thomas. She is of mostly Irish and French ancestry, with distant Native American and German roots. Hathaway was raised Roman 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 realised 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, Hathaway stated that her religious beliefs are "a work in progress". Hathaway attended Brooklyn Heights Montessori School and Wyoming Elementary School in Millburn. Hathaway graduated from Millburn High School, where she participated in many school plays; her high school performance as Winnifred in Once Upon a Mattress gained her a Paper Mill Playhouse Rising Star Award nomination for Best Performance by a High School Actress. During this time, Hathaway was in plays including Jane Eyre and Gigi at New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse. She spent several semesters studying as an English major and Women's Studies minor at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York before transferring to New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, referring to her college enrollment as one of her best decisions, because she enjoyed being with others who were trying to "grow up". She also studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Hathaway was the first teenager admitted into The Barrow Group Theater Company's acting program. A soprano, Hathaway performed in 1998 and 1999 with the All-Eastern U.S. High School Honors Chorus at Carnegie Hall and has performed in plays at Seton Hall Preparatory School in West Orange, New Jersey. Three days after her 1999 performance at Carnegie Hall, she was cast in the short-lived Fox television series Get Real at the age of 16. Hathaway is a trained stage actress and has stated that she prefers performing on stage to film roles. Her acting style has been compared to those of Judy Garland and Audrey Hepburn. She cites Garland as one of her favorite actresses and Meryl Streep as her idol. Career Hathaway's first role in a motion picture was opposite Christopher Gorham in Walt Disney's drama film The Other Side of Heaven (2001), inspired by John H. Groberg's memoir In the Eye of the Storm. Before production of the film, she was cast alongside Julie Andrews in the lead role of Mia Thermopolis in another Disney production, the comedy film The Princess Diaries, based on Meg Cabot's 2000 novel of the same name and directed by Garry Marshall. Hathaway auditioned for the role of a princess-to-be during a flight layover on the way to New Zealand and was cast on the strength of this one audition. She won the role over 500 other girls. Released prior to The Other Side of Heaven in hopes that its success would increase interest in Heaven, The Princess Diaries became a major commercial success, grossing US$165 million worldwide. Many critics praised Hathaway's performance, with a BBC critic noting that "Hathaway shines in the title role and generates great chemistry." Also released in 2001, The Other Side of Heaven, directed by Mitch Davis, met with mostly negative reviews, but it performed well for a religion-themed film. Hathaway continued to appear in family-oriented films over the next three years, subsequently becoming known in mainstream media as a children's role model. Hathaway began appearing in dramatic roles after The Princess Diaries 2. She said that "anybody who was a role model for children needs a reprieve", although she noted that "it's lovely to think that my audience is growing up with me".  Hathaway starred in Barbara Kopple's drama film Havoc, in which she played a spoiled socialite, appearing nude in some of its scenes. Although the content of the film was different from her previous films, Hathaway denied that her role was an attempt to be seen as a more mature actress, citing her belief that doing nudity in certain movies is merely a part of what her chosen form of art demands of her; and because of that belief she does not consider appearing nude in appropriate films to be morally objectionable. After Havoc, Hathaway was cast alongside Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Ang Lee's drama Brokeback Mountain (2005). While Havoc was not released in theaters in the United States because of its weak critical reception, Brokeback Mountain won rave reviews and received several Academy Award nominations. Hathaway would later assert that the content of Brokeback Mountain was more important than its award count and that making the film made her more aware of the kind of stories she wanted to tell as an actress. Personal life In 2004, Hathaway began a romantic relationship with Italian real estate developer Raffaello Follieri, during which she participated in the development of the charitable Follieri Foundation, as a donor and as a member of its board of directors until 2007. The Manhattan-based foundation, established in 2003, focused on efforts such as providing vaccinations for children in Third World countries. In June 2008, it was investigated by the IRS, for failure to file required nonprofit information forms. Citing concern that this investigation and other legal issues in which Follieri was involved could hurt her acting career, Hathaway ended their relationship in mid-June, 2008. Follieri was arrested on June 24, 2008, on charges of defrauding investors out of millions of dollars in a scheme in which Follieri posed as the Vatican's point man on real-estate investing. It was reported that the FBI confiscated Hathaway's private journals from Follieri's New York City apartment as part of their ongoing investigation into Follieri's activities; however, Hathaway was not charged with any crime. On October 23, 2008, after earlier pleading guilty, Follieri was sentenced to four and a half years in prison. In November 2008, Hathaway began dating actor Adam Shulman. The couple became engaged in November 2011 and were married on September 29, 2012, in Big Sur, California in an interfaith Jewish and Roman Catholic service.