Anne Hathaway Couldn’t Be Convinced That She Didn’t Have ‘Sex Appeal’
She's a Scorpio, for crying out loud!
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I am a firm believer that Anne Hathaway’s forthcoming movie The Idea of You will be an early contender for hottest movie of the year, which is what makes her new interview with Vanity Fair all the more topical. Among many things, including astrology and dealing with online vitriol, Hathaway addresses the eye-roll-inducing appraisals of her sex appeal that she dealt with early in her career. Hathaway specifically recounts being told she didn’t have sex appeal when she first started acting, but she just couldn’t be convinced this was true (because it wasn’t!): “I was like, ‘I’m a Scorpio. I know what I’m like on a Saturday night,’” she told Vanity Fair. Hathaway says she recognized the role of “the male gaze” in defining sex appeal in the ’90s and 2000s, calling it “very pervasive and very juvenile.”
For those who have never had the pleasure of encountering one out in the wild, Scorpios are known for their passion, intensity, and charisma—all of which explain Hathaway’s well-earned confidence. It also explains her stellar ability to make a 40-year-old single mom a liberated but still very human sex icon in The Idea of You, alongside Nicholas Galitzine as a much younger, Harry Styles-esque pop star. Speaking of Hathaway’s role in the distinctly sizzling rom-com (out May 2), she said, “It’s not like one healthy, consensual female orgasm (okay, multiple) is going to change the world, but I’m really happy to be part of a story that takes pleasure in female pleasure.” (And we are so happy for you, Anne!!!)
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Michael Showalter, who directed The Idea of You, also referenced Hathaway’s Scorpio identity and how he watched it manifest in her leadership and obsessive attention to detail on set: “She’s fiery. She has deeply held feelings about things that can feel intractable,” Showalter said. “I’m a Gemini. Things change constantly for me. Once we put an astrological sign to it, that opened up the floodgates for us to communicate in a different way. I’m not joking. And I’m not an astrology guy, but even I was like, ‘Oh, my God. Of course. I understand you now. It’s just that you’re a Scorpio.'”
In addition to astrology, Hathaway speaks at length about how gender has colored her career and experiences in a famously, unforgivingly misogynistic industry. Specifically, Hathaway recounts how the wave of vicious online hatred she faced after winning an Oscar in 2013 cost her roles, in a classic, uniquely gendered case of suffering from success: “A lot of people wouldn’t give me roles because they were so concerned about how toxic my identity had become online,” Hathaway said. She regards Christopher Nolan as “an angel” who “did not care about that and gave me one of the most beautiful roles I’ve had in one of the best films that I’ve been a part of” with Interstellar, after previously directing Hathaway in The Dark Knight Rises. “I don’t know if he knew that he was backing me at the time, but it had that effect,” Hathaway said. “And my career did not lose momentum the way it could have if he hadn’t backed me.”
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At different points, Hathaway talks about growing up and clocking the different nature of men and women’s roles in movies (“Young men were encouraged to pursue their desires and young women were encouraged to be desired”); being publicly vulnerable about her fertility struggles (“Given the pain I felt while trying to get pregnant, it would’ve felt disingenuous to post something all the way happy when I know the story is much more nuanced than that for everyone”); being told for years that her career would take a “nosedive” once she turned 35; and pivoting from asking herself “How do I look?” as a young woman in her twenties to “How do I feel?” at this stage in her life. In other words, it’s a conversation rife with all the wisdom you’d expect of the Princess of Genovia all these years into her reign.