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Anne Hathaway is getting real about the more uncomfortable sides of making movies.
During a recent interview with V Magazine, Hathaway shared how she felt about having to do chemistry tests with different actors in the early days of her career, explaining that “it was considered normal to ask an actor to make out with other actors” during the audition process back in the early 2000s.
“Which is actually the worst way to do it,” she told the outlet about the practice. “I was told, ‘We have ten 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,” she added without naming the role.
Hathaway called having to kiss a number of men during a chemistry test “gross.” (Photo by Gary Miller/Getty Images)
ANNE HATHAWAY SAYS SHE’S DONE DRINKING AFTER NIGHT OUT WITH MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY
The actress landed her breakthrough role as Mia Thermapolis in “The Princess Diaries.” She would go on to star in “Ella Enchanted” and “The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement,” before starring in “Brokeback Mountain,” “The Devil Wears Prada,” “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Les Miserables,” which earned her an Academy Award.
For her part, as a producer on her most recent film, “The Idea of You,” the actress changed the process in how the male lead was cast.
“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,” she explained. “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.”
Eventually, they cast Nicholas Galitzine, who Hathaway said “charmed this entire room” during his audition. She described seeing the film’s director, Michael Showalter, “beaming,” as he watched the two of them dance to a song from The Alabama Shakes.
Hathaway changed the audition process when she was casting for her new movie “The Idea of You.” (Michael Buckner/SXSW Conference & Festivals via Getty Images)
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It wasn’t always smooth sailing for the actress, however, as she experienced massive hate online following her job co-hosting the Academy Awards in 2011 with James Franco, telling Vanity Fair in March that she missed out on roles because executives “were so concerned about how toxic [her] identity had become online.”
“I had an angel in Christopher Nolan, who did not care about that and gave me one of the most beautiful roles I’ve had in one of the best films that I’ve been a part of,” she told the outlet, referring to the 2014 hit, “Interstellar.”
“I don’t know if he knew that he was backing me at the time, but it had that effect,” she admitted. “And my career did not lose momentum the way it could have if he hadn’t backed me.”
She further explained that while the experience of being labeled toxic on the internet was humiliating, she learned the only way to make it through the rough times is “to not let it close you down.”
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Hathaway received hate online following her job co-hosting the Academy Awards with James Franco in 2011. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
“You have to stay bold, and it can be hard because you’re like, ‘If I stay safe, if I hug the middle, if I don’t draw too much attention to myself, it won’t hurt.’ But if you want to do that, don’t be an actor,” she explained.
Lori Bashian is an entertainment production assistant for Fox News Digital.
