Anne Hathaway Recalls “Gross” Chemistry Tests Where She Kissed Lineups of Men
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As an actor, Anne Hathaway has shared plenty of kisses onscreen, but apparently, at one time she had to do a lot of smooching off-screen as well, during the audition process.
In a new interview for V magazine, the WeCrashed star got candid about having to kiss a lineup of men for “chemistry tests,” recalling that it was quite the unpleasant process. “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,” she told writer Derek Blasberg. “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.”
Hathaway added, “And I was so young and terribly aware how easy it was to lose everything by being labeled ‘difficult,’ so I just pretended I was excited and got on with it. 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.”
As the producer of the new romantic film The Idea of You, which she stars in alongside Nicholas Galitzine, Hathaway got to call the shots and make the process much less uncomfortable. Instead of kissing the auditioning men to see if she had chemistry with them, Hathaway crafted a different sort of test. “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,” Hathaway said. “I was sitting in a chair like we had come in from dinner or a walk or something, we pressed play, and we just started dancing together.”
In the end, Galitzine chose a track by rock band Alabama Shakes, and the rest was history. “I heard [lead singer Brittany Howard’s] voice and I just started smiling,” Hathaway recalled. “And [Nicholas] saw me smile, so he relaxed, and we just started dancing.”
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