ANNE
  HATHAWAY

With her latest film, Anne Hathaway proves that she is more than just a cute, perky actress.

After gaining popularity in the smash hit THE PRINCESS DIARIES, Hathaway in just five years has become one of the most sought after actresses in Hollywood. With HAVOC being an exception, she has stuck to family friendly fare, starring in Disney hits and this summer’s blockbuster GET SMART.

However, it is her latest turn as Kym, a rehabilitated, chain smoking addict in RACHEL GETTING MARRIED that is giving Hathaway the best notices of her career, along with some early Oscar buzz.

To promote the film, Hathaway spoke with a group of reporters including the Crypt to discuss the challenge of the role, playing against type, and the Oscar buzz talk in this exclusive.

Did you have people in mind that you knew who was like your character in RACHEL GETTING MARRIED?

ANNE HATHAWAY: Kym was herself first and foremost but I definitely can draw similarities between her and people that I know and yes, I did tell them.

Were they happy or not?

AH: I think so. They saw the movie and loved the movie and talked about how proud they were of me. The fact of the matter is that people that I’m friends with would get along with someone like Kym and I myself would get along with someone like Kym and so from my group of friends, it’s a compliment. For other people, it might not be.

How did this role come to you? Did you audition?

AH: I didn’t! Jonathan is amazing and saw me in THE PRINCESS DIARIES and didn’t see a goofy young girl. He saw a budding actress and I was so amazed because nobody I thought saw that. He just sent me a script with a note attached asking which role I wanted to play.

So why the role of Kym?

AH: It was just that thing. Not to sound just like a BS actor, I just knew. When I read BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, it was the same thing. They asked me which role I wanted, Alma or Lureen, and I just knew that it was going to be Lureen. Kym, I just got her, her whole emotional makeup was so logically layed out. That really appeals to me.  Once I understand something, I understand it for life and when I know something to be true I can’t change my opinion about it.  I can’t go back and feign ignorance. Kym just made sense for me from the first moment I read it.

There was such intelligent fighting between the sisters in terms of their psycho analysis on each other. Was that something that the script allowed you to enhance this antagonistic behavior or was it purely in the moment that allowed for some improvisation?

AH: How do I say this without sounding like an asshole? (Laughter) There’s really no way. You could never play a part smarter than what the part is and you could never play a part as having an interesting emotional makeup than the part has because otherwise you are chewing up the scenery and putting yourself the actor in front of the story. The language used in the script and the fact that Kym isn’t so educated and that she is so comfortable with it really informed her as a character and her insane level of intelligence as well as how fast her mind was able to work. Yes, it did have some impact in terms of just blowing the cap off of the top of my imagination where I could take her.

How far did you push it?

AH: I’m sure on the cutting room floor there’s a myriad of takes that has it so I just gave Jonathan the most truthful, dynamic performance that I found and I let him decide because he is a master and so I knew that wouldn’t be a problem. I was concerned in letting my character tell the truth.

And improvising?

AH: Improvising. I usually cleared it with Jonathan first. I would never start down the path of a scene without letting anybody know. It wasn’t that type of film. Ninety five percent of that movie is actually scripted dialogue, it’s really just filler things here and there. The dialogue that I had was actually scripted with only a couple of exceptions. I always cleared it with Jonathan before I did anything because I have this fear of wasting film. Seriously, when you mess a line on film it costs $500 to the production. I would hate having that pressure on me so I just went to Jonathan asking if I could improvise. There’s so many stories with it so I’ll just say that he was fine with it.

Can you give just one example?

AH: You know the scene where I tell the musicians to be quiet? Yeah. (Laughter) Basically I loved the scoring live thing. I love the fact that the movie was scored live. I thought it was great and most of the time it enhanced the scene. However, in one particular scene, and we never rehearsed by the way, we just went into it full throttle, anyway the musicians were right outside and I couldn’t hear what Rosemarie was saying because it’s a soft, intimate scene. We do the first take and I’m getting more and more flustered. I went up to the first AD and I asked him how important was it for Jonathan to have the music in this scene. I want to be diplomatic and I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes. Jonathan is the master here and he’s the big guy on set. I don’t want to be that actress that causes a problem during an enormous scene in which everybody has to cry. I don’t want to do that. Anyway, the AD came back and said that Jonathan wanted to know if it was a problem for me. I just said that it is the tiniest bit distracting so he said if Jonathan felt it was distracting to do something about it. I’m only doing what the director said I could do so I screamed that line “Are they going to play all f’n weekend” and I didn’t tell my scene partners I was going to do that. They all kind of sat up and I just saw Bill Irwin’s face collapse in relief because after the take he came up to me and he said “I had the same problem.” It became organic in the scene because you don’t see it coming and it gets a big laugh when watching the movie.

Why do you think Kym was an addict?

AH: I believe addiction is a disease and it’s genetic. I can’t tell you why until they figure out why do people have this disease but I can tell you how I think her problem got exacerbated. I think she was a girl who grew up in a household that was probably permissive. She saw people drinking. She saw people smoking, probably occasionally smelled weed coming up and down the stairs and I think she was an extreme person who would want to go faster and faster and faster. Growing up in suburban Connecticut, she probably started drinking around 12 or 13 and started smoking cigarettes. I’m sure someone brought some weed over sometime and she probably liked it. Then when she was 14 somebody probably brought over cocaine and she really liked that. She wanted to do more and more and more and it got worse and worse and worse. She was modeling at the time so she had easy access and a lot of time away from her family. I think by the time she was 16 and was babysitting her little brother, it was a full blown heroin addiction.

Was her family and in particular her mother the cause of it?

AH: I think there was a disconnect between the two of them in how they looked at it but I don’t think people cause other people’s addiction. It’s a disease. With the family, you could see how gregarious and open and loving Paul, her father is, and I’m sure Abby was not that. I think she was a little held back but she probably had her wild moments too. I see Abby that’s not the most open of people but I think when her son died, she had to distance herself from being a mother. It was too painful. She’s trying to be a mother as best as she can but she’s also trying to protect herself. Based on what you see in the movie, I don’t want to blame Kym’s parents. I don’t want to. Obviously they were a part of it because she was a kid and they were adults but I think it’s a complicated issue and blame doesn’t do much. It doesn’t matter to me whether the parents were a problem in the beginning but I do think it was difficult for Kym as she was blaming herself so much for the death of her brother. As she was going through facilities and getting help and going to meetings to talk about it, people would say to her, “Where were your parents? Why were they leaving a drug addict alone with their son?” She would always defend them and I think that this is the first time in her life where she feels differently and the reason why the story has to happen at this moment in Kym’s life is because Kym has accepted that while she was the one driving the car, she wasn’t the one who put herself in that position. She wishes that every day she did not take the drugs but she feels that her family has some complicity in this and she needs them at some point to acknowledge that and she needs to insist on it.

The character of Kym seems like she’s stuck in an adolescent mindset. She’s stuck more in the moment in terms of her own maturity and development. Do you think this was an intentional choice or did it develop that way?

AH: I’d love to say that I was clever enough to say that I came up with that but Kym’s reactions were all within Jenny Lumet’s script. I’d love to take credit for it but I really can’t but there’s a saying in recovery that you stop emotionally maturing when you start using. Kym started when she was 12 or 13 and she’s not advanced when she deals with anxiety and stress. However, I do think Kym’s soul is very evolved and mature, especially at this point at how deep she goes and how well she loves is astonishing. That was another part of the character that I thought was so beautiful. You have a girl who’s struggling so much at the fine points of life and is getting so many things right but she never gets credit for it because of this horrible baggage that she has that she will have forever as long as she has a family.

Your performance is getting raves. Do you pay attention to all this Oscar buzz?

AH: I’m not going to lie, it’s a huge compliment. I’ve never done work that was considered on that level before so it’s thrilling just as an actress. It’s a breakthrough. It’s also not even October yet and I’ve seen FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION. It’s a lovely compliment that everything must be taken with a healthy dose of perspective. If people are still saying about this at the end of December, I would definitely think about it.

Thanks Anne.

AH: Thanks everyone!

(Special thanks to Falco Ink)