Anne Hathaway spoke this week about her experience “in the 2000s” when she was asked to kiss “ten guys” for a chemistry reading.
“I was told, ‘We have ten guys coming today and you’re chosen.’ Aren’t you excited to kiss them all?’ And I thought, ‘Is there something wrong with me?’ because I wasn’t excited,” Hathaway said V Magazine. She did not specify what project the hearing was about.
“I thought it looked disgusting,” she continued. “And I was so young and painfully aware of how easy it was to lose everything by being called ‘difficult,’ so I just pretended to be excited and carried on.”
Hathaway said the practice was “considered normal” at first. “It wasn’t a power play, no one was trying to harm me or hurt me,” she said. “It was just a very different time and now we know better.”
For his new film, The idea of youHathaway was a producer – and conducted her chemistry readings a little differently.
“We asked each of the actors who came to choose a song that they thought their character would love, that they would put on to make my character dance, and then we would do a little improv,” she said. “I was sitting in a chair like we had just had dinner or a walk or something, and we pressed play and we just started dancing together.”
The film, based on Robinne Lee’s 2017 novel of the same name, tells the story of a 40-year-old single mother (Hathaway) who falls in love with a 24-year-old international pop star played by Nicholas Galitzine.
During his audition, Galitzine chose an Alabama Shakes song, Hathaway recalled. “It was just easy. I heard [lead singer] Brittany’s voice and I just started smiling. And he saw me smiling, so he relaxed and we just started dancing. No one was showing off. No one was trying to get the job. We were just in a space dancing. I looked over and Michael Showalter, our director, was beaming. Spark!”
The idea of you is scheduled for a streaming release on Prime Video on May 2.
