Anne Hathaway: I had to kiss 10 actors in one day to test chemistry
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Anne Hathaway has revealed she had to kiss 10 men in a day for on-screen “chemistry tests” during an audition early in her career.
The Devil Wears Prada actress, 41, said casting practices in the film industry had come a long way and “now we know better”.
Speaking to V Magazine, she said: “Back in the 2000s – and this did happen to me – it was considered normal to ask an actor to make out with other actors to test for chemistry. Which is actually the worst way to do it.
“I was told: ‘We have 10 guys coming today and you’re cast. Aren’t you excited to make out with all of them?’ And I thought, ‘Is there something wrong with me?’ because I wasn’t excited. I thought it sounded gross.”
The Oscar-winner said that she agreed to it because she was “so young and terribly aware how easy it was to lose everything by being labelled ‘difficult’”.
“I just pretended I was excited and got on with it,” she said. “It wasn’t a power play, no one was trying to be awful or hurt me. It was just a very different time and now we know better.”
Hathaway, who made her name at 17 starring in the The Princess Diaries, which also featured Dame Julie Andrews, did not specify which film she was talking about.
She later starred in the Devil Wears Prada opposite Meryl Streep and won an Oscar for her supporting role as Fantine in Les Miserables in 2013.
In her latest film, The Idea of You, she plays a 40-year-old single mother who begins an unexpected romance with a 24-year-old boy band singer.
Hathaway, who is a producer as well as lead actor on the romantic comedy, contrasted the casting experience of her youth with the approach she used to conduct chemistry tests on the newly released film.
“We asked each of the actors coming in to choose a song that they felt their character would love, that they would put on to get my character to dance, and then we’d do a short little improv,” she said.
Her eventual co-star, Nicholas Galitzine, a 29-year-old British actor, chose the rock band Alabama Shakes.
“I just started smiling,” she said of the audition. “And he saw me smile, so he relaxed, and we just started dancing.
“Nobody was showing off. Nobody was trying to get the gig. We were just in a space dancing. I looked over and Michael Showalter, our director, was beaming. Spark!”
Galitzine has also described his feelings about the audition, telling trade publication Variety that “there was something almost spiritual that kind of happened there where I felt this immediate connection to Annie”.
