Does Anne Hathaway want to be buried or cremated when she dies? The actress looks bemused by the question – inspired by a scene in her new film comedy, The Intern – and responds: "You want my death plan?"
"I don't want to be buried," she goes on to explain in her soothing, effervescent tone. "I either want to be cremated or I hear they can now bury you at the root of a tree, so I'd like that too – as long as it's a protected tree that's not going to become a piece of Ikea furniture.
"I'm so sorry, Steven!" she adds, grinning at her publicist in the New York boutique hotel room where she is holding court. "You know this is so going to be the headline by the way: 'Anne Hathaway wants to be cremated!' "
The actress from the Brooklyn borough of the city knows all about headlines. She's been making them since she became an overnight sensation and every little girl's role model as an unknown 19-year-old actress starring opposite Julie Andrews in Disney's fairytale drama, The Princess Diaries. While her contemporaries were in and out of rehabs and parties, Hathaway was working hard to capitalise on the role with nuanced performances in films such as Brokeback Mountain (2005), The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Alice in Wonderland (2010), The Dark Knight Rises (2012) and her 2013 Oscar-winning role in Les Miserables.
Now 32, she's matured on and off screen, having overcome a traumatic chapter of public embarrassment in 2008 when her boyfriend of four years, Raffaello Follieri, was arrested for defrauding investors of millions of dollars by claiming connections to the Vatican. "It was bad, but I was a babypants and now I understand a lot more about people and myself," she told Instyle recently. Hathaway married actor and jewellery designer Adam Shulman in 2012 and seems pleased when I comment on how comfortable she looks in her own skin these days.
"Some people who start off acting when they are very young, they do a brilliant job of navigating and becoming themselves in the public eye. But for me, not so much," she admits. "I had to really spend a lot of time being someone I wasn't before I learned how to be who I was. And that's cool, it happens. Some of us are late bloomers. But now I don't really think about, 'am I sharing my true self or not', because I am just being myself."
In The Intern, written and directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Nancy Meyers (It's Complicated, Something's Gotta Give), Hathaway embraces the life of workaholic wife and mother Jules Ostin, who has created an online fashion website that's taking off. Robert De Niro plays Ben Whittaker, a 70-year-old widower who ditches the boredom of retirement to apply for a senior internship at her company and ends up teaching more than he learns.
"It took me weeks not to feel tongue-tied," she says. "You hear the name Bob De Niro and you are just like 'legend', so I guess I was expecting someone larger than life, and when I met Bob I realised that he was just this sweet, humble, deeply present, passionate person, so it was a lovely surprise to me."
De Niro seems equally smitten in his own understated way. "She's really great and I was so impressed when I saw her at a benefit in Washington a few years ago, especially that she could sing and dance like that, and I told her that when we met – that I can't do that at all!'"
Meyers describes Hathaway as "the classic A student. She's super prepared and gets how to be light when we need that, and very authentic and emotional when the scene calls for that too."
Both sides are in evidence today. When asked whether she's looking forward to having a family, Hathaway says deadpan: "I'm always looking forward whenever you ask that question!" But minutes later, she looks surprisingly vulnerable when asked about a backlash that surfaced during her 2013 Academy Awards season as her red carpet choices were derided and the hashtag "Hathahaters" was trending on Twitter. "I relate to Jules in this film being a young person with a ton of responsibility and feeling over your head but trying to look like you know what you are doing. I learned from making mistakes then dusting myself off with a little grace and dignity and trying again to fail upwards."
"Annie", to her friends, is wearing a chic black halter-neck top and fitted black cigarette trousers with a belt displaying a sparkly red heart with an arrow thrust through it. Those following Hathaway's first foray into Instagram won't be surprised she's wearing her heart literally close to her sleeve. On her account, @annehathaway, she alternates between posting heartfelt messages for charities and behind-the-scenes photos from her magazine shoots to cute photos of her spaniel-terrier puppy Kenobi and rainbows.
"I don't think about Instagram in terms of being brave or that I'm saying, 'this is who I am'," she says in explaining her reversal on avoiding all social media. "The brilliant thing about Instagram is that it's your choice if you want to follow me or not, so no one is foisting me upon you and you are in control of whether or not we have this social media relationship, and that feels fair to me."
The bumps in the road seem to have given Hathaway wisdom beyond her years. Asked if she related to her character's workaholic tendencies, she quickly replies: "If you asked me that five years ago, I would say yes absolutely. But I am doing better now at taking breaks and trying not to let work define my life. I just took the whole summer off, because it was time to chill out a little bit. I certainly understand the driven nature of my character and being ambitious and in competition with herself, but I like that my life is not so driven by work any more."
If you want to see her riled, ask the usually serene star to comment on the gender disparity in Hollywood. "It's frustrating and I hate reading those statistics but it also ignites a fire in my belly," she says of the hacked Sony emails that confirmed male leads are always paid more than female leads. "I would like to give 3 billion cheers to Jennifer Lawrence for negotiating the first $20 million payday for an actress. How brilliant that she stood by her guns and said, 'I know that I am worth this' and they gave it to her. So I'm hoping it's just a matter of time for everybody else."
SIX SURPRISES ABOUT ANNE HATHAWAY
#1 She is a trained soprano who performed at Carnegie Hall as part of the All Eastern US High School Honors Chorus.
#2 Hathaway was the only teenager admitted to the prestigious acting program at the Barrow Group in New York
#3 Her TV debut was in a Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate commercial filmed in 1997 in Maplewood, New Jersey, and her first lead role was in the short-lived 1999 TV drama Get Real.
#4 After her then boyfriend's arrest in 2008, the FBI confiscated Hathaway's personal journals because she had participated in his foundation's development and was a financial donor. They were later returned and court papers stated she was an unwilling beneficiary of the stolen money.
#5 For the 2006 movie The Devil Wears Prada, she was asked to gain 10 pounds [4.5 kilograms] as Andy, and then told she had to lose it and they would instead pad her out for the heavier scenes. After production wrapped up, she was presented with that padding, which she jokingly nicknamed "Andy's ass".
#6 The actress once admitted that if she had not been successful as an actress, she would have pursued a career as a psychoanalyst. She told Vanity Fair: "I've been psychoanalysing my friends since I was 11."
