Anne Hathaway - Biography

Name: Anne Hathaway

Born: 12 November 1982 (Age: 27)

Where: Brooklyn, New York USA

Height: 5' 8"

Awards: Nominated for 1 Oscar and 1 Golden Globe

It's always difficult for teen stars to move seamlessly into an adult career. Often audiences are unwilling to let them age. More often the actors themselves are unable to summon the necessary gravitas. No matter how talented the teen - take Sarah Michelle Gellar or Lindsay Lohan for examples - the transition is painful. Unless, of course, you're Anne Hathaway. After Ella Enchanted and the two Princess Diaries movies were huge hits at the box office, on DVD or both, she was perhaps the biggest teen star since Elizabeth Taylor. With her geeky, charming persona, flowing locks and pretty dresses, she was an icon of innocence, a role model for pre-pubescent girls the world over.

For Hathaway, this was both a blessing and a bane. Sure, these films had made her famous and relatively wealthy, but there was no guarantee that the public would accept their fluffy little princess in more serious ventures. Aggressively challenging her old audience and purposefully seeking a new one with Havoc and Brokeback Mountain, then hitting big with the arch comedies Get Smart and The Devil Wears Prada, Hathaway showed that she would not be held back by simple typecasting. She was already too rounded a performer for that to happen.

She was born Anne Jacqueline Hathaway on the 12th of November, 1982, in Brooklyn, New York. Her ancestry was partly French, German and Native American, but mostly Irish, her mother's side of the family hailing from Donegal and her father's from Cork. Her father was Gerald T Hathaway, a graduate of La Salle College Boys' High School in Philadelphia, La Salle itself and the University of Pittsburgh's School of Law. As an attorney, he'd work in defence, and mergers and acquisitions but come to specialise in labour and employment law, advising companies, private equity funds and investment banks in layoffs and restructuring, usually in huge deals ranging between 40 million and 5 billion dollars. Over the years he'd work for such renowned firms as Marks & Murase, Holtzmann, Cunniff, Bray & McAleese, Bingham McCutchen and Littler Mendelson. While at La Salle he'd met his future wife, Kate McCauley, star of the college's famed music theatre programme and daughter of Philadelphia entertainment royalty, her father being the popular radio personality Joe McCauley. From 1942, Joe had presented America's second all-night radio show, The Dawn Patrol, which featured many legendary guests, including Frank Sinatra, who'd pop in after gigs whenever he played Philly. In 1954, Joe had moved to a morning show and become known as The Morning Mayor.

Continuing her father's success, at La Salle Kate had taken lead roles in One Touch Of Venus, South Pacific, Cabaret and Hello Dolly! and had gone on to perform as Petra in a production of A Little Night Music at Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theatre and as Fantine on a national tour of Les Miserables. She would continue to perform as she raised her three children, Michael, Anne and Tom.

. When Anne was 6 the family would move out to the township of Millburn in Essex County, New Jersey. It was a rich area, predominantly white and Democrat and very popular with professionals working in Manhattan, having a direct train service to Penn Station. A bright kid boosted by a pre-school Montessori education, Anne would study at Wyoming School on Myrtle Avenue, then move on to Millburn Middle School and Millburn High, one of the top schools in America, where 97% of students would go on to college. Raised a Catholic - as a kid she'd dream of becoming a nun - Anne would spent several summers at Camp Johnsonburg, a Christian camp at the Johnsonburg Presbyterian Centre.

Given her background, Anne might easily have followed her father into the professions, but her mother would prove to be the prime influence on her life. Having seen Kate in the title role of a regional production of Evita, having heard the applause she received, young Anne would set her heart on a theatrical career. She'd set about achieving this with precocious zeal. Beyond school plays, while at Middle School she'd study for six months with The Barrow Group, a theatre organisation based on West 36th Street in New York. Run by Seth Barrish and Lee Brock, the group believed wholly in spontaneity and set about making actors more sensitive, responsive and imaginative onstage. Thus Anne, the only teen ever to have been accepted by the group, would analyse scripts, study scenes, delve into Shakespeare (after whose wife she had, of course, been named) and pick up the rudiments of TV and film performance. She'd also work with voice coaches and choral groups, in her mid-teens being selected by MENC (the Music Educators' National Conference) to appear in the All-Eastern Honors Ensembles, where around 600 of the most talented High School pupils in eastern America would be invited to perform. A soprano, Anne would join a choir of some 350 to perform at New York's Carnegie Hall.

Already Anne was seeking work. At 15 she'd attended her first professional audition when aiming for an ad for Cheez Whiz. Very quickly she'd actually win a part in a commercial for the real estate group Better Homes And Gardens, a comic affair where she'd sit on the porch of her boyfriend's house, upset that his family's soon to be leaving town. He comforts her by saying it takes ages to sell a house, so at least they'll have the summer together. Then a woman plonks a Better Homes And Gardens For Sale sign down, the horror music begins, and the two kids fall into each other's arms in a tearful farewell.

For further training, Hathaway would study at her local theatre, The Paper Mill Playhouse. In this she was lucky as the Paper Mill, officially designated the state theatre of New Jersey, was dedicated to teaching youngsters from the age of 10 and also ran intensive summer programmes. Founded in 1934, the Playhouse was known for rediscovering and reimagining classic plays, particularly musicals, and, specialising in large-scale productions, it attracted many actors and much of its audience from New York City. Indeed, it was known as the Broadway theatre 30 minutes from Broadway. Over the years, many of the greats had played here, including Liza Minnelli, Carol Channing, Ben Vereen, Bernadette Peters, even Patrick Swayze. At her Millburn schools Anne would perform in many plays, also taking part in productions at Seton Hall Preparatory School, a Roman Catholic boys' school in nearby West Orange. Her greatest success, though, would come as Princess Winnifred the Woebegone in a Millburn High production of Once Up A Mattress, a musical rewrite of The Princess And The Pea that had opened off-Broadway in 1959 with the Winnifred role originated by Carol Burnett, and been revived on Broadway in 1996, with Sarah Jessica Parker and Jane Krakowski. This was an entertaining tale of plot and counter-plot, enchantment and redemption, where no one in a mediaeval kingdom is permitted to marry until the prince does - and his wicked mother ensures that all potential brides fail her absurdly stringent auditions. Hathaway's Winnifred, nicknamed Fred, was a brash, unsophisticated girl from the marshlands, who belts out such tunes as Swamp Of Home, A Girl Named Fred and Happily Ever After and proves sensitive enough to win the prince. The show was very popular in High School drama departments, so popular that, when Hathaway was nominated for a Paper Mill Rising Star Award, the New Jersey high schools' equivalent of a Tony, she found herself losing to another girl in exactly the same role. No matter, all nominees received a full scholarship to the Paper Mill's Summer Musical Theatre Conservatory, a professional training programme with advanced classes in singing, acting and dance. Hathaway was benefiting from an impressive education, and would receive further experience the next year when she'd enter the pre-college summer programme at CAP21 on New York's West 18th Street, part of the Collaborative Arts Project affiliated to New York University, where she'd study improv and vocal technique, music theory and dance, and classical and contemporary drama.

. Before this, though, Hathaway had already scored her first proper professional acting job. September of 1999 would see her make her TV debut in the series Get Real, where Jon Tenney and Debrah Farentino would star as Mitch and Mary Green, parents of three kids all attending Truman High School.

Jesse Eisenberg would play the youngest son, innocent but obsessed with sex: Eric Christian Olsen would play his hooligan elder brother, while Hathaway would play the oldest child, Meghan, a Grade A student with a rebellious streak. Over 20 episodes, she'd have to deal with her mum's pregnancy and rumours of her own, boyfriends and enticing strangers, new jobs, first sex and AIDs tests - the usual socio-political teen fare. Produced by Fox, the show would run through till April, 2000 but, despite strong guest stars like Christina Milian, Maggie Wheeler, Tom Arnold and David Koechner, poor viewing figures would see it dumped with two episodes still left to run. This wasn't good news for Hathaway. Remorselessly ambitious, the lack of work coming her way would push her into anxiety and depression.

. Though she'd been accepted at Vassar College, Hathaway would now be forced to put her academic career on hold as she began her cinematic career in earnest. In keeping with her religious upbringing, her first part would be in The Other Side Of Heaven, based on the memoirs of Mormon missionary John H Groberg and quietly promoting the Christian faith. The film would begin in 1953 at Brigham Young University, with Christopher Gorham's 19-year-old Groberg being asked to leave his sweetheart Hathaway and take off for Tonga where he must build a series of Mormon communities. Once abroad he endures all manner of hardship, including natural disaster and having his feet gnawed by rats, but wins the natives over with his courage, faith and medical knowledge. Hathaway's role would be tiny, indeed she'd feature mostly as a voice, reading out her character's love-letters to her absent beau.

The release of The Other Side Of Heaven would be delayed by some months, opening in Utah in December, 2001, then nationally in the spring of the next year. This was because its producers were hoping to hitch a ride on Hathaway's coat-tails, as it was generally considered that she was about to become a star. While preparing for her part as Jean Sabin, Groberg's fiancee, she'd auditioned for and won the part that would bring her breakthrough. Her fresh-faced looks meant that she was eminently capable of playing characters younger than herself, and so she took the lead as Mia Thermopolis in The Princess Diaries. Based on a novel by Meg Cabot and directed by Garry Marshall, who'd earlier masterminded the TV series Happy Days and enjoyed a huge hit with Pretty Woman, this would see Hathaway as a 15-year-old school-kid in San Francisco, a charming klutz who lives with her mother in an old fire station and endures all the usual problems of an American teen. Things change rapidly, though, when she discovers that, through her mysterious father, she's actually the princess of the tiny Andorra-like European country of Genova.

This nation is now in crisis as its prince has died and an evil baron is set to succeed, so queen Julie Andrews (in her first film role for 15 years) seeks out lost princess Hathaway and trains her in the ways of royalty, with many slapstick laughs and scores settled along the way. Hathaway was clearly no ugly duckling to be magically transformed, but she did possess a refreshing normality in her advanced clumsiness - she was already an accomplished physical comedienne - and the film proved a big sleeper hit for Disney, breaking the $100 million barrier in the States and yielding a massive worldwide take. The movie would generate extra publicity for Hathaway when clips appeared in the video to Krystal Harris's hit single Super Girl.

. The Princess Diaries would premiere in the US at the end of July, 2001, by which time Hathaway had picked up her academic education once again. Having missed the first semester, she'd taken her place at Vassar, in Poughkeepsie, New York, where she'd major in English, studying gothic American and early English literature. She'd also minor in Women's Studies, delve into political studies and sing in the all-female a cappella group Measure 4 Measure. Set in one thousand picturesque acres of the Hudson Valley, Vassar was one of the top liberal arts establishments in America and, with strong drama and film courses, could boast such graduates as Meryl Streep, Hope Davis, Frances Sternhagen and Lisa Kudrow. Once The Princess Diaries had scored its surprise $23 million opening, however, offers of work would come flying in and Hathaway would put her education on hold once more, eventually leaving Vassar without graduating (in this she was in good company, Jane Fonda and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis having done the same).

One of the first jobs she took while at Vassar would set her apart as an actress of unusual range and nerve. Most would have pressed for an immediate sequel to The Princess Diaries, or an equally high profile release. Instead, in December, 2001, in between exams, Hathaway auditioned for and won a lead role in the stage musical Carnival! This formed part of the ninth season of Encores!, a series staged at the City Center which each year presented three long-neglected musicals and had recently spawned the Broadway revival of Chicago. Based on the 1953 movie Lili, starring Mel Ferrer and Leslie Caron, Carnival! the musical had opened in 1961 and concerned a young girl joining a travelling show and falling for a crippled and jaundiced puppeteer. In this new version, Broadway star Brian Stokes Mitchell would star as the puppeteer, with Hathaway as the young girl Lili. They would share the stage with four puppets designed and built for the occasion by Jim Henson's New York muppet workshop - the red-headed boy Carrot Top, the impossible diva Marguerite, Renardo the Fox and the walrus Horrible Henry - the puppets being the only medium through which the embittered Mitchell can communicate with his young love.

Carnival!, though running only for five performances between the 7th and 10th of February, 2002, would be a major success, with Hathaway more than holding her own alongside some of Broadway's finest. Indeed, the New York Times' Ben Brantley would write "Give thanks this morning for Anne Hathaway, who just completed her freshman year at Vassar and who somehow makes unspotted purity look like the latest fashion". For her efforts she'd receive a Clarence Derwent Award as Most Promising Female, given by the Actors' Equity Association for the best individual supporting performances on Broadway. Thus the young actress would be placed amidst impressive company, previous female Clarence Derwent winners including Dianne Wiest, Joan Allen, Annette Bening, Mercedes Ruehl, Calista Flockhart and Allison Janney, with male winners including the stellar likes of George C Scott, Gene Wilder, Gene Hackman, Christopher Walken, James Woods, Morgan Freeman and John Malkovich.

. Hathaway's desire to stretch herself would reveal itself further in her next two pictures. The first of these would be The Cat Returns, one of several products of Hayao Miyazaki's Ghibli studios taken up and re-voiced for the American market by Disney, Miyazaki being the prime mover behind the classics Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. Here Hathaway would lend her voice to a young girl who saves a cat from being run over by a truck, only to discover he's actually the Prince of Cats and she's now charged with marrying him. Thus she's kidnapped, taken to the Kingdom of the Cats and menaced by Tim Curry's Cat King. Shown at Cannes in 2003 but only given a wider release on DVD in 2005, the film would also feature Cary Elwes, Peter Boyle and Elliott Gould. Hathaway's other film of 2002 would be an all-star adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby where Christopher Plummer would star as Nickleby's cruel and spiteful uncle, plotting to ruin his young nephew, played by newcomer Charlie Hunnam. First he'd attempt to kidnap Nickleby's crippled friend Smike then, thwarted, he'd offer to let the dissolute and manipulative Bray off his debts if he gives his innocent daughter, Nickleby's new love Madeline, in marriage to the aged and abominably ungallant Edward Fox (a potential investor in Plummer's business). Hathaway would play Madeline, a wan and often tearful artist who has suffered terrible tragedy and continues to suffer daily as she bows to the whims of her bed-ridden and aggressively demanding father. She'd perform the role well, with a flawless English accent and great charm in her chaste romance with Hunnam. She'd need to be impressive, too, to avoid being blown away by show-stopping performances from the likes of Jim Broadbent, Juliet Stevenson, Jamie Bell and Timothy Spall.

2003 would see Hathaway studying but also filming, the next year bringing two more starring roles. The first of these would be in the delightful Ella Enchanted, based on a novel by Gail Carson Levine.

Here Hathaway would play a poor country girl, as a baby given the "gift" of absolute obedience by feisty fairy Vivica A Fox, so she must do everything she's told. This causes her much grief when her secret's discovered by her wicked stepsister, and much more when she's ordered by evil regent Cary Elwes (her co-star in The Cat Returns) to murder her new love, Hugh Dancy's prince. Much like The Princess Bride in its humour and winning charm, the film would feature some excellent touches, like a mediaeval shopping mall complete with wooden escalators, and Hathaway's curse would bring many opportunities to reveal again her talent for physical comedy - "hop to it", "hold your tongue" and "pat yourself on the back" being just three casual utterances to evoke a hilariously unnecessary response.

. Oddly, despite being a superior family film, Ella Enchanted would fare badly at the box office. The same could not be said for Hathaway's next venture, a sequel to The Princess Diaries. Here, due to the machinations of evil viscount John Rhys-Davies, she would be forced to marry within one month or forfeit her crown, thus facing the prospect of a loveless union for the sake of her country. The formula would work once again, the movie taking $95 million in America and much more worldwide. Though no longer in her teens, Hathaway was now perhaps the biggest teen movie star in the world, an idol to millions of adolescent girls. Yet her success was already causing problems. Contracted to make the second Princess Diaries movie, she'd missed out on the female lead in Joel Schumacher's adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom Of The Opera, Emmy Rossum taking the part of Christine. The film would have been an ideal opportunity for Hathaway to reveal her classical vocal talents and also step into adult cinema in a movie guaranteed a big audience. To successfully mature onscreen and escape that pretty little princess tag, she'd have to look elsewhere.

She'd begin 2005 with another voice-part, playing the lead in Hoodwinked!, purporting to be the true story behind the Little Red Riding Hood tale. A smart 3D animation, it was put together Rashomon-style, delivering the viewpoints of Hathaway's Red, Glenn Close's granny, Patrick Warburton's wolf and James Belushi's woodcutter, beginning with ultraviolence at granny's house and concerning burglaries at the local bakery. Naturally, Red would be hipper than usual (though not as hip as Christina Ricci's version), the young girl being a funky exponent of kung fu. It would be another hit for Hathaway.

Hathaway's other two movies of 2005 would see her go to great lengths to shatter her nice girl image and gain acceptance in the adult thespian world. Indeed, so very keen to move on, she'd started this process back in September of 2003 when she'd begun filming Havoc, directed by Barbara Kopple and written by Stephen Gaghan, lauded for Traffic and, later, Syriana.

Held back until the Chicago Film Festival of 2005, then released straight to DVD the next month, Havoc would see her as a bored rich girl from Pacific Palisades, living in a big house with mum Laura San Giacomo and dad Michael Biehn, neither of whom have any idea of what she gets up to in her spare time. With her best friend, Bijou Phillips, she hangs out with a gang of well-to-do white kids wholeheartedly embracing black gang culture, indulging in gin and juice, toking and frantic but low-level violence. Leader of the gang is Mike Vogel (backed by his dopefiend buddy, the ever brilliant Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who hides his insecurities behind this ridiculous facade and enjoys heartless head from Hathaway in the back of his car. Things take a turn for the worst, though, when the kids take a holiday in other people's misery, attempting to score drugs in a run-down area dominated by Latino gangs, where Vogel is ripped off and has a gun held to his head. The boys seem to learn their lesson, but Hathaway and Phillips, who've already been experimenting with lesbianism and hardcore narcotics, go back, seeking kicks and some kind of real life amidst the tattooed gangbangers. They don't get far as Step One is a sexual initiation ceremony that freaks them out completely, and leads to betrayal, retribution and death.

. It was eye-popping stuff for fans of The Princess Diaries. Hathaway really went for it as a giggling girl desperate to be sophisticated, messing with bisexuality and drugs, leaving broken families and faces in her wake. It was also testing for her in that she had to progress from being a carefree thrill-seeker to a damaged young adult, at last taking responsibility for her own actions. And her next picture would be perhaps even more challenging for her teenage followers. This was Brokeback Mountain, where sheep herders Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger fall in love, but must hide their passion behind a facade of normality to escape violent censure in the unforgiving heartlands of the Sixties and Seventies. Ledger would marry Michelle Williams while Gyllenhaal would take up with Hathaway, daughter of a rich farm equipment salesman, who catches his eye when she's working as a speed racer at a rodeo. Picking him up in a bar and once more demanding sex in the back of a car, she reveals herself to be a pretty predator who purposefully picks him to father her perfect all-American family.

Hathaway's was the shortest of the four main leads (the other three would all be Oscar nominated), but she made the most of it, her every appearance a statement, as she swiftly built her character. She'd change her hair constantly, reveal her social ambitions and her rebellious nature, both at the rodeo and at dinner when her quiet smile reveals her pleasure at Gyllenhaal's putting-down of her domineering father. Her final phone conversation with Ledger, her mouth telling polite lies while her eyes reveal her shame and her loss, was exceptionally well-performed.

Clearly she was equally at home with slapstick comedy and fraught drama. Yet still she did not abandon her studies altogether, in 2005 transferring from Vassar to the Gallatin School Of Individualized Study, a small college within NYU where she could create her own curriculum and learning plan, taking courses at the various schools of NYU and improving her knowledge of literature - without interrupting her film career.

. At this stage, life was good all round for Hathaway as in 2004 she'd begun a long-term relationship with one Raffaello Follieri, four years her senior. Having studied economics and law at the University of Rome in the late 1990s, Follieri had gone on to open Beauty Planet, mass marketing hair and beauty products in Italy. In 2003, he'd be sent to New York by his wealthy businessman father Pasquale to launch the Follieri Group, a real estate company planning to raise funds to buy property from the Roman Catholic church and redevelop it for "socially responsible purposes". A significant proportion of any profits made would be reassigned to the Follieri Foundation, a charity group that would provide scholarships to Catholic school children, improve health care for kids in poor countries, and offer free prescription drug discount cards to uninsured or underinsured Americans.

It was a big and big-hearted plan and, though Raffaello got off to a quiet start, he was boosted in 2004 by an official report into the scale of sex abuse in the Roman Catholic church. In the US alone some 4,392 priests had been accused. Law suits would inevitably ensue, and by 2005 the church in America would be forced to pay out some $500 million in settlement costs and legal fees, with much more to come. To pay for it, church property was having to be sold off. In Boston alone, it divested itself of nearly $200 million worth of real estate. Beyond this, demographic studies revealed that Roman Catholic parishioners were abandoning the inner cities, leaving many properties either under-utilized or abandoned completely - ripe for sale.

The timing was perfect for Follieri, everything was in place. The Follieri Group had hired as VP one Andrea Sodano, an engineer who'd worked for Pasquale. Sodano's uncle was Cardinal Angelo Sodano, until 2006 the Vatican's Secretary of State and Pope John Paul II's right hand man in his final days. This Vatican connection would help Raffaello to gain access to church offices and officials in the US, and impress potential investors. In 2005, he'd befriend Douglas Band, a White House intern during the Clinton years and a friend of Monica Lewinsky, who was presently managing the former president's schedule and travelling with him around the world. Band believed Follieri's Vatican connections would help secure Catholic voters for Clinton's wife Hillary, then beginning her campaign for the presidency.

He also believed there was money to be made and introduced Raffaello to Yucaipa, a Los Angeles investment firm run by Ron Burkle, the supermarket magnate and billionaire co-owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins, who had Bill Clinton as a partner and senior advisor. Yucaipa would agree to invest up to $100 million in Follieri's church property venture, with the aim of building mixed income housing, community centres and retirement facilities. Around $50 million was soon spent on properties in Philadelphia and Chicago. They'd improve America and make a fortune - typical Bill Clinton. From this would spring another deal, with Michael Cooper, chief executive of the Toronto-based Dundee Realty Corp, Cooper also being a friend of Bill Clinton's and a keen supporter of the former president's humanitarian initiatives. He'd agree to invest more millions to purchase church property in Canada. Further meetings would be held with Mexican businessman Carlos Slim, perhaps the richest man in the world.

. Follieri's plans were working. He was on top of the world, and Hathaway shared in his success. He moved his offices to Park Avenue and employed Filipino nuns as receptionists, even putting a small altar in one room. He rented a $37,000 a month flat in the Olympic Tower on 5th Avenue, complete with chef and staff, in which they'd live together. She took him to the glitzy premiere of Brokeback Mountain, he took her to the Vatican to see the Pope's private gardens and meet John Paul II himself, and flew her to Capri and the Bahamas. Together they attended St Patrick's Church in Manhattan, just across the road from their apartment, dined at Nobu and Cipriani and, in 2006, partied in the Dominican Republic resort of Punta Cana where, at the home of designer Oscar De La Renta, they'd hang out with Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Mikhail Baryshnikov. But it wasn't just about luxury. In 2006, Hathaway would also accompany Follieri to Nicaragua where she'd help the Follieri Foundation vaccinate over a thousand children against hepatitis. The same year, at the annual meeting of Clinton's Global Initiative, a group that had raised billions for charity, Follieri would be called up onstage for a personal thank you from Mr President, in recognition of his efforts. Hathaway and Follieri were a golden couple, indeed.

Hathaway's fortunes would improve further as she enjoyed yet more success onscreen. In The Devil Wears Prada, based on the novel by Lauren Weisberger, she'd play an Ohio girl seeking work as a journalist in New York, falling into a job at the prestigious fashion magazine Runway, headed by a ferocious Meryl Streep, whose character was based on fashion supremo Anna Wintour. At first, having no interest in fashion, she bridles under Streep's constant demands and endless perfectionism, but is soon seduced by the glamour, artistry and adrenalin rush of this punishing environment.

Sacrificing her relationship, her family and her friends, she quickly rises from runner to First Assistant, losing her soul along the way. Hathaway was excellent in the part, at first a picture of ungainly naivety in her baggy jumpers and woollen tights, then an ultra-efficient sophisticate in Chanel and Jimmy Choos. Once again she would show her skill at physical comedy as she scurried about the city at Streep's outrageous behest, and she'd need to exhibit a wide range of expressions, from panic to disappointment, irritation to elation, as well as empathy, confusion and shame. Of course, she also looked fantastic in high fashion.

. The Devil Wears Prada would be another $100 million hit for Hathaway, but she'd continue to cannily vary her output. Having for the second time missed out on a major musical - this time Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd - and turned down the lead in the low-level comedy Knocked Up, she'd next star in the 2007 period drama Becoming Jane, having been persuaded to take the role by Ang Lee, director of Brokeback Mountain. Directed by Julian Jarrold and based on a biography by Jon Spence, itself rather tenuously based on letters by Jane Austen, this would see Hathaway as the writer in her youth, a poor girl expected to marry for money but instead being drawn to James McAvoy's high-living, arrogant but poor lawyer. Once more Hathaway would master the English accent, and also hide her natural looks, coming over as gawky, forceful, witty, independent and intense as she defies social imperatives and seeks both truth and love (while at the same time picking up much of the storyline for Pride And Prejudice).

Onscreen, at least, 2008 would be another good year, bringing the comedy drama Get Smart, inspired by the 1960s series created by Mel Brooks. Here Steve Carell would star as the ambitious but bumbling Agent 86, working at CONTROL, a secret government agency battling its Russian counterpart KAOS. Teamed with Hathaway's impressively resourceful Agent 99, he's then sent east to take on archenemy Terence Stamp, being saved on a regular basis by his efficient partner. The film was peppered with tremendous stunts and SFX, but not so much that Carell and Hathaway's characters were buried. Once again takings would climb far over the $100 million mark and inspire a spin-off, Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd Out Of Control, in which Hathaway would make a cameo appearance. Hathaway would then enjoy more lucrative success when being chosen as the new face of Lancome.

Though in her professional life she was still on the up, 2008 would see her personal life come crashing down around her. The year before had brought many problems for her partner, Raffaello Follieri. In April he'd had a suit brought against him by Ron Burkle, claiming that Follieri had misappropriated investment money to fund his extravagant lifestyle. Apparently, $107,000 had been spent on a private jet to take Follieri and Hathaway to that New Year party with the Clintons.

A further $150,000 had gone on medical expenses for Follieri, his family and Hathaway. Money had even been spent on elite dog-walkers to exercise their brown Labrador, Esmerelda. Beyond this, it was revealed that a dodgy payment of $400,000 had been made to Doug Band, while Follieri was sued by a private jet company for nearly $250,000 in unpaid bills between 2006 and 2007, and by PR firm the Carmen Group for a further $240,000. Come 2008, he'd be nabbed at the Olympic Tower and charged with writing a bad cheque for $215,000 to real estate developer John Morrongiello when he only had $39 in his account.

With help from new investors, and financial aid from Hathaway, Follieri would clear these debts and, for a while, continue to pay rent on the apartment in the Olympic Tower. He was even close to setting up deals to keep his church property business going. But now the vultures were circling, Hathaway's involvement as Follieri's partner and board member of the charitable Follieri Foundation gave the case extra glamour and would thus bring major publicity to prosecutors. In June, 2008, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo would confirm that he was launching an investigation into the Follieri Foundation, which had vaccinated only a thousand Nicaraguan kids, rather than the 190,000 planned and had not disclosed its tax information. The Follieri Group, too, had been less active than promised in buying church properties, and hard done hardly any development at all. By the end of the month, Follieri was arrested on suspicion of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and for money laundering. According to the FBI, between June, 2005, and June, 2007, he had wired approximately $977,000 to a bank account in Monaco, prosecutors having probable cause to believe the money had been illegally obtained. He was forced to pay over $2 million to the federal government and twelve items of jewellery he'd given to Hathaway had to be handed to the FBI in Los Angeles. Follieri was also accused of telling potential investors he was an executive officer of the Vatican and even of asking a monsignor to dress as a senior clergyman to give the impression of strong Vatican ties. Apparently, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican's representative at the UN, had called Douglas Band to vouch for Follieri, but now his spokesman denied the archbishop had ever recommended Follieri to the Clintons. Cardinal Angelo Sodano would make himself unavailable for comment. Bail would be set at an unreachable $21 million and Follieri was sent to the Metropolitan Correctional Centre, in September pleading guilty on 14 counts.

Before his arrest, Hathaway had first resigned from the board of the Follieri Foundation, then left him. His staff claimed they'd always had a volatile and passionate relationship, with many a flare-up and reconciliation. As the clouds gathered, she'd ended it.

He'd flown back from a business meeting in England to meet her in New York as she passed through on the Get Smart press tour, but had not managed to repair the damage. She'd then flown on to Australia, but continued to call him. Then, the night before his arrest, she called again to finish it for good. Follieri would face the music without her - though he was accompanied by his father, who'd himself, in 2005, been convicted in an Italian court of misappropriating over $300,000 from a failed resort company he was supposed to oversee (though this case was still under appeal). Follieri would eventually be sentenced to four and a half years in jail.

. While publicising Get Smart, Hathaway would be grilled remorselessly by press and TV interviewers, but in the main keep her good humour while giving nothing away. She'd even appear on Saturday Night Live, sending herself up in the monologue by claiming she'd rebounded from Follieri into the arms of a Nigerian prince she'd met via spam e-mail. The show would also see her as Mary Poppins, spreading venereal disease through town. Now she'd throw herself into her work, delivering a quick run of releases. First of these would be Rachel Getting Married, directed by Jonathan Demme, written by Sidney Lumet's daughter Jenny and featuring Debra Winger, where Hathaway would play an ex-addict, just out of rehab, who goes home to her dysfunctional Connecticut family for the wedding of her older sister, Rosemarie DeWitt. DeWitt's Jewish, her groom's black and the wedding's Indian-themed, but the happy inclusiveness is undermined by boiling familial resentments, much of it to do with an accidental drowning. Hathaway would again step out of her comfort zone, her Kym being needy, manipulative and hurt, and looking all the more damaged for her harsh eye makeup and jagged bob. A success at the Toronto Film Festival, the movie would create quite an Oscar buzz for Hathaway and, indeed, she would be nominated both for an Oscar and a Golden Globe. Following this would come Passengers where she'd play a therapist counselling five survivors of an air crash. Each recalls an explosion onboard that the airline claims never happened then, as Hathaway begins an unprofessional relationship with Patrick Wilson, the most charismatic and secretive of her five patients, the survivors begin to disappear, one by one. Far more cheerful would be Bride Wars where Hathaway would team up with Kate Hudson, the pair playing long-time best friends who both dream of getting married at the Plaza and have saved up for ten years to do so. Unfortunately, their ceremonies are both booked in the same slot and neither is willing to change, so a comic conflict beaks out, Hathaway's sweet schoolmistress and Hudson's go-getting lawyer using suntan, hair dye, even their fingernails to score points over each other. It would be a middling hit at the US box office, bringing in around $60 million.

Hathaway's next project would be another big one, Tim Burton's live action/3-D/CGI take on Alice In Wonderland featuring Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter and Michael Sheen as the Cheshire Cat. Hathaway would appear as the White Queen, banished by Helena Bonham Carter's crazy Red Queen and seeking Alice's help.

Though she has not been afforded an opportunity to show her musical talents, with Ella Enchanted and The Devil Wears Prada, Anne Hathaway has proved herself a redoubtable comic. With Brokeback Mountain and Rachel Getting Married she's revealed her strengths as a tragedienne. We can only assume that this ambitious young actress will be a success for years to come.

Dominic Wills