Anne Jacquelyn Hathaway was born November 12, 1982, in Brooklyn, New York . Her father, Gerard, is an attorney, and her mother, Kate, is a singer and stage actress. Hathaway grew up in New Jersey, attending Wyoming School in Millburn . Beautiful and bright, she went to Vassar College for several semesters before transferring to New York University . She holds the honor of being the only person ever accepted into the Barrow Group Theater Company as a teenager. Hathaway is also classically trained as a soprano, and is rumored to have been the frontrunner for the role of Christine Daaé in Joel Schumacher’s Phantom of the Opera.
Hathaway’s acting career began in a short-lived television series titled Get Real (1999). The show was slated for a twenty-two episode run but was axed after only twenty episodes despite a strong fan base and a strong cast (Eric Christian Olsen and John Tenney among others). Hathaway’s character, Meghan Green, earned her a Teen Choice Award nomination.
Based partly on her standout performance in this series, Hathaway garnered the lead role in Gary Marshall’s film The Princess Diaries in 2001. Playing a socially awkward teenager who learns she is royalty, Hathaway won critics and fans over with her bubbly personality and trademark smile. For this role, Hathaway was again nominated for a Teen Choice Award as well as an MTV Movie Award for Breakthrough Female Performance. Starring with Julie Andrews, Hector Elizondo, Heather Matarazzo, and Mandy Moore, the film rocketed Hathaway into the limelight.
In 2001, Hathaway also starred in the film The Other Side of Heaven. Based off the John Groberg novel, she played the girlfriend of a missionary who leaves behind his loving family to live with the Tongan people. The film was well received and further helped Hathaway in her quest to build a fan base.The year 2002 brought more good fortune Hathaway’s way. She landed a role in Nicholas Nickleby, a film adaptation of the Charles Dickens’s novel. Hathaway shone as Madeline Bray opposite Charlie Hunnam’s Nicholas Nickleby. The film was nominated for a Golden Globe in the category of Best Motion Picture, and won the National Board of Review’s Best Acting by an Ensemble, which included Hathaway.
In 2004, Hathaway continued to take roles in family-oriented filmsstarring in Ella Enchanted. Based off the well-loved Gail Carson Levine novel, the film adaptation differed too greatly from the book in the minds of many avid fans.. However, for many people (fans of the book and not) the film was decent family fun. With a solid cast, including Cary Elwes, Eric Idle, and Minnie Driver, the film did well, and its target audience was overall pleased with the final result.
In 2004, she followed up the Princess Diaries with its sequel, Royal Engagement. However, even with a returning director and cast, the film did not do as well as the first installment. Then in 2005, Hathaway provided her voice talents to the animated film Hoodwinked. This film also did just alright at the box office, and fans of the animated genre were generally disappointed. Inevitably compared to similar films such as Finding Nemo and the Shrek series, Hoodwinked had trouble living up to its predecessors.
Perhaps the tepid reception of these two films played a part in Hathaway’s choice to diverge from the family-film genre. Her next role was in Havoc in 2005. The storyline of the movie centers on two upper-class female teens who find themselves entangled in the sex, drugs, and violence of the Los Angeles gang scene. Hathaway even had a nude scene in the film, proving that she has potential to do more than just children’s and young adult’s movies.
In 2005, Hathaway took another role that made a very similar statement. She played one of the leads in the Oscar winning film Brokeback Mountain . Hathaway and cast were nominated by multiple organizations in the category of Best Ensemble Cast. She followed Brokeback Mountain with the 2006 film adaptation of The Devil Wears Prada, co-starring the incomparable Meryl Streep. Hathaway is currently in post-production for Becoming Jane, the biography of novelist Jane Austen’s life before she achieved reputation.
As far as Hathaway’s personal life goes, Anne was dating a real estate developer named Raffaello Follieri until he became the center of an enquiry that saw him looking at more than four years in prison on charges of fraud. Follieri faced charges that he illegally took over $2 million from real estate investors and that he falsely persuaded his victims that he could purchase the unwanted properties in the United States that belonged to the Roman Catholic Church for discounted rates.
At the 2008, 80th Oscars, Hathaway arrived with a vivacioulsy red fish tailed dress, leaving the red carpet somewhat in the shadows. Anne was assigned to the task of presenting an award in her show-stopping creation which was covered with intricate floral rosettes which climbed over her shoulder with Grecian-inspired draping. Quickly recovering from a troubled 2008, Anne hit the red carpet early in 2009 to promote her movie, Bride Wars, in which she starred with Kate Hudson as two feuding brides both vying for a wedding date at New York's prestigious Plaza Hotel.