Anne Hathaway won a Golden Globe as Best Supporting Actress in a musical in 2013 for her performance as Fantine in Les Misérables, directed by Tom Hooper with Hugh Jackman playing Jean Valjean, which would later earn her an Academy Award. 
She gave the first of many exclusive interviews to the journalists of the Hollywood Foreign Press in 2001, when she was only 18, talking about her feature film debut in The Princess Diaries, directed by Garry Marshall, and co-starring Julie Andrews. She would star in the sequel The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004).
Hathaway played the mother in Armageddon Time (2022) written and directed by James Gray, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
Anne Hathaway compared the way she was in high school with what Mia went through in The Princess Diaries, the movie based on the young adult novel by Meg Cabot: “Certainly my experience in high school was nowhere near as traumatic or as bad as Mia’s, but it wasn’t perfect. The only difference was that my senior year I was on a television series (Get Real) working eight-day work weeks, but I had a normal high school experience and loved it. I was on sports teams and I had a great group of friends. I wasn’t Miss Popular at all, but I wasn’t unpopular, I was friends with everyone, but I was off everybody’s radar. I just did my own thing, which was acting, but I definitely had a wonderful group of friends whom I’m still very close with, even now we’re all going off our different ways to college.”
The young actress thought that the way the high school students were represented in the movie was realistic and reflected her own experience in real life: “The characters that are more three-dimensional and have a larger role do not imbibe drugs or alcohol, which certainly I can relate to because in high school I was absolutely as straight as an arrow. So I feel that the way they are represented is fairly real because nowadays everyone is obsessed with showing how horrible it is in high school, how bad the kids are, and how many vices they have. But then I wanted to say, ‘what about those of us that don’t do that? When are we ever represented?’ So I think this is a pretty accurate representation.”
Hathaway believed that most little girls dream of being a princess, and held on to the fantasy as young women, but in a different way: “The amazing thing about the princess fantasy, and I think any woman will agree with me, is that you have it for your entire life, but it changes over time. When I was younger, I obviously watched all the Disney movies with princesses, I dreamed about being rescued by a prince and having a kingdom, waking up someday wearing the tiaras, and having someone say, ‘Yes, you’re a princess, you have this.” But now that I’m older, that whole side of it doesn’t really appeal to me so much anymore. What appeals to me more is what appealed to Mia, which is that, if I was a princess, just think of all the amazing things I could do for other people. What is amazing is having that power and being able to utilize it. That’s a true sign of growing up, which is one reason why the character of Mia appealed to me because she made that realization, she did grow up and mature.”
This is what the actress would do if she had the power of a princess: “I want what I believe is best for my country to happen. I hope that someday women and minorities are given the same opportunities as the ethnic majority. I don’t think we can really call ourselves the land of the free and the home of the brave until that happens.”
If she had a choice of becoming a princess or a famous actress, this is what she would choose: “I’d have to say famous actress because in that case I would not only feel artistically fulfilled, but if I was famous, I would also have the ability to help other people who needed it, who maybe didn’t have a voice, as opposed to being a princess where unfortunately you are stuck with the stigma of wearing a tiara, having a Prince Charming and everything that society has dictated to us since basically the beginning of fairytales.”
These are the actors and actresses that inspired young Anne to pursue acting as a career: “First and foremost, there’s everyone’s favorite actress, Meryl Streep, who is so brilliant because she’s such a complex actress and gives such layers to all of her performances in any role, whether she’s playing a suburban housewife or a concentration camp survivor. Another woman, who is so good, and I can’t wait to see what the rest of her career is like, is Cate Blanchett, because she so fully commits to every role that she does, and I have so much respect for that. Then among the actors, I would have to say, Tom Hanks, obviously, because you can’t argue that he’s great, and another younger actor, who I can’t wait to see what sort of career he has, is Jude LawThis is how the first-time actress reacted when she learned that the legendary Julie Andrews would play her grandmother, the Queen of Genovia: “” I was actually in a department store in New York when I got the call on my cell phone, and I was so shocked that I had to sit down, but there weren’t any chairs, so I sat on the floor. It was a dream come true. Julie Andrews has been my hero since I was three years old, and with my background in musical theatre, I just couldn’t believe how lucky I was. I was so nervous before I met her, but she instantly put me at ease and we’ve become great friends, so she’s wonderful, she’s truly the loveliest person in the world.”
Hathaway loved being directed by Garry Marshall in her first movie and learned a lot from him: “It makes my heart stop every time I think about that moment when luckily Disney said, ‘yes, we want you to be our princess,’ which was incredible to hear. And Garry Marshall directed Pretty Woman, which was one of my favorite films growing up. Garry changed my life with two pieces of advice that he gave me. The first one was, ‘You’re going to hopefully have a really long career and there’s going to be ups and downs, but there’s something I really want you to know, that there is more to life than show business. You have to promise me that you will always remember this, go back to school and expand that side of yourself, and always love your family and your friends, really value them, because they’re what’s important at the end of the day.’ So that’s knowledge that I will keep with me forever. The other thing he said to me was, ‘You never know what’s going to be ahead, so you might as well have as much fun as you can, while you’re making a movie.’ And anybody who’s ever worked on a Garry Marshall film will say that he lives that to the fullest.”