During the early 2000s, Anne Hathaway appeared in movies predominantly aimed at teen audiences, such as The Princess Diaries and its sequel, A Royal Engagement, as well as Ella Enchanted and Hoodwinked! She’d spent her teenage years featuring in plays and even performed in the All-Eastern US High School Honors Chorus as a soprano when she was in college.
Her talents as both an actor and a singer were apparent from a young age, and she quickly utilized her impressive vocal abilities in some of her early screen roles. In Ella Enchanted, for example, Hathaway covered several songs which made it onto the soundtrack, such as ‘Somebody to Love’ by Queen and ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’ by Elton John and Kiki Dee, duetting with Jesse McCartney.
Her time in the theatre also allowed her to star in several musicals, such as Carnival! and Twelfth Night, giving her a chance to demonstrate her abilities as a singer as well as an actor. Hathaway ended up scoring one of the leading roles in Les Misérables in 2012 alongside Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe. She won the ‘Best Supporting Actress Oscar for playing the part of Fantine. It is a tragic role, with Fantine having to sell her body as a means to survive, and Hathaway’s performance was widely praised.
To prepare for the part, she starved herself so that she could emulate Fantine as she became inflicted with tuberculosis. She also distanced herself from her husband to make her as miserable as possible. Hathaway is extremely dedicated to her career, especially when she’s able to perform a character whom she feels an emotional connection to. “I was dealing with a lot of darkness, and I was starving, so I wasn’t that much fun to be around,” she revealed in an interview with Chelsea Handler.
Hathaway clearly can excel in a musical, but she’s rarely had the chance to star in more than a handful. In an interview with Neils Hesse about the promotion of Ella Enchanted, the actor revealed that her dream role would be Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. The musical is based on George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, which was first adapted for the screen in 1938. Then, the movie inspired the play My Fair Lady in 1956, which spawned a movie adaptation in 1964, starring Audrey Hepburn as the main character.
My Fair Lady follows Eliza, a Cockney flower seller, who partners up with a professor who teaches her to speak ‘proper’. It has remained a popular musical since it first debuted, having been performed across theatres of varying sizes for years. It’s no surprise that Hathaway has wanted to star in a version of the musical for years – she has frequently been compared to Hepburn, even dressing up as her for a Vogue photoshoot.
After Hathaway’s star turn in Les Misérables, she was reportedly going to be starring in a remake of the Hepburn film, although nothing ever came to fruition. While Hepburn is an incredible talent, especially when it comes to musicals, her questionable British accent in One Day suggests that My Fair Lady might have been a slightly trickier part to master.
