When Anne Hathaway was just 16, she thought she had landed her first big role. Instead, the future Oscar winner walked away with one of Hollywood’s ugliest lessons.
Keep reading to learn more.
With The Odyssey introducing Anne Hathaway to a new generation of moviegoers and The Princess Diaries celebrating its 25th anniversary, attention has naturally turned to the Oscar winner’s remarkable career.
Before she landed the role of Mia Thermopolis in 2001’s The Princess Diaries, Hathaway said she learned one of Hollywood’s toughest lessons from a casting director when she was a young teenager.
“At 16 years old, it was ‘Congratulations, you have the part. I’m not saying you need to lose weight. I’m just saying don’t gain weight,’” the 43-year-old star recalled in a 2019 interview with Allure. “Which of course means you need to lose weight.”
Gained weight for 2020 movie
More than two decades later, Hathaway found herself preparing for a role under very different circumstances.
While filming 2020’s The Last Thing He Wanted, director Dee Rees asked whether she would be willing to gain about 20 pounds for the character – a request Hathaway happily accepted because it served the story rather than an unrealistic beauty standard.
She even joked about the transformation while posting a weight-training video on Instagram.
“I am gaining weight for a movie role and it is going well. To all the people who are going to fat shame me in the upcoming months, it’s not me, it’s you. Peace xx.”
She added, “P.S, I wanted to set this to Queen’s ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ but copyright said no.”
For Hathaway, the experience highlighted how much Hollywood had changed since she first entered the industry as a teenager.
The ‘thin thing’
She recalled costume designer Anne Crabtree asking detailed questions about how her body naturally changed throughout the month so costumes could be adjusted accordingly – a huge shift from her experience at 16.
“So, I had that, then 20 years later I have Ane Crabtree asking me what my body does on my moon – which I realized meant my period – so she can make adjustments for me,” she said in her interview with Allure.
The Devil Wears Prada star – who advocated “a more inclusive approach to beauty standards” while filming the sequel to the 2006 movie – said the conversation with Crabtree was a reminder that things were starting to shift.
“It was just this beautiful thing,” she shared, adding, “I am cautious in my praise of how Hollywood is shifting. There is so much more body inclusivity – which is great! But the thin thing is definitely still the centralized ‘normal’ expectation.”
‘No shame in gaining weight’
Her message has also extended beyond movie sets.
A few months after welcoming her first son in 2016, the star of The Hustle responded to comments about postpartum weight by sharing a photo of a pair of homemade denim shorts and a message that resonated with mothers everywhere.
“There is no shame in gaining weight during pregnancy (or ever),” she wrote, according to Today. Hathaway, who’s expecting her third child, continued: “There is no shame if it takes longer than you think it will to lose the weight (if you want to lose it at all). There is no shame in finally breaking down and making your own jean shorts because last summer’s are just too dang short for this summer’s thighs.”
Off-screen, Hathaway encouraged women to embrace their changing bodies but on-screen, she sometimes had to dramatically change her own.
‘Taxed my body’
Several years before sharing that message, she underwent a dramatic physical transformation to play Fantine in the 2012 film adaptation of Les Misérables – a performance that earned her an Academy Award but came at a significant cost.
To portray the struggling factory worker, Hathaway lost 25 pounds, later telling People she “wasn’t in a good place” during the process.
“I’d lost an unhealthy amount of weight in two weeks,” Hathaway said. “I didn’t know anything about nutrition. I taxed my body, and my brain bore the brunt of it for a while. I just felt very anxious and very lost at that time.”
Looking back, she said the transformation affected her long after filming ended.
“That weight loss was not a long-term good thing for my health, and it took a really long time to come back from it,” she said. “And I was still really sick because of it.”
What do you think of the physical demands placed on stars to achieve Hollywood’s level of beauty standards? Please let us know your thoughts and pass this story along so we can hear from others!
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