Anne Hathaway
Spotlight By: Andrea Tuccillo
AndreaTuccillo@TheCinemaSource.com
In her new film, Becoming Jane, Anne Hathaway transformed herself from East coast native into the perfect English lady. Hathaway, who grew up in Brooklyn and New Jersey, gracefully took on the role of acclaimed author Jane Austen in the first film to document the Pride and Prejudice writer’s life. Playing the part required learning the proper way to curtsy, dancing elegantly at a ball, and getting into the mind-frame of an era where marrying for love was not commonly an option. A fan of Austen’s novels from a young age, Hathaway was ready and willing to accept the challenge.
“I moved to England, London specifically, a month before we started filming to just really study the accent and focus on everything that needed to be done for the character,” she says. “I guess one could describe it as an 18th century boot camp. But let’s point out that boot camp included letter writing and piano lessons.”
Manners and politeness were highly regarded during the time period in which the movie is set, so all cast members had to brush up on some old-fashioned customs. “We actually had an etiquette coach on the film who was lovely and who I had worked with before on a musical,” Hathaway says. “It was a huge part of the film because this was a story about respecting propriety and do you challenge arbitrary rules because you see a way in which the rule could be different or better. So it became very important because it was good to have something to rail against.”
That conflict of the conventions of the time versus a person’s desire to break free is a common theme in all of Austen’s books, and was also a prevalent force in Austen’s real life. Hathaway believes there is a balance to be found between the way women and men interacted back then and the way they do now.
“I think there’s a happy medium,” she says. “I like the freedom that people have now to write their own rules. I just wish that people thought more about what they were doing. That being said, there are certain moments where you just want to go, ‘Oh God, what was I doing?’ But it’s very easy to romanticize chased courtships where the engagement was sealed with the first kiss. In actuality I think it would’ve been pretty depressing. It was very improper for men and women to speak without chaperones and often times the only moment where you could speak to someone was at a dance…it’s like basically choosing your husband at a club. I don’t really think that is all that genteel. Also back then courtship often had nothing to do with love it was just really an economic transaction. So, like I said there are parts that I would keep and there are parts that I would just say good riddance.”
Hathaway has been happily dating real estate developer Raffaello Follieri since
