Before the official start of filming of the "Barbie" movie that audiences see today, Anne Hathaway was approached with the project with screenwriter Olivia Milch. In Milch's original conception, Hathaway played Barbie "as a Barbie who has been excluded from Barbieland, an eternal outsider". Although the two were not selected for filming, Hathaway was full of praise for the completion of "Barbie", especially a monologue in the film, which can be seen as a portrayal of her career: "Being a woman is an impossible task...... You have to be skinny, but not too skinny, and you can never say you want to be skinny, you have to say you want to be healthy, and then quietly skinny. You have to be rich, but not too rich...... You have to love being a mother, but you can't always talk about your children. You have to be a working woman, but you also have to be considerate of others at all times. When Hathaway debuted, she was told that she was "not sexy enough" and "her career would not last long". In 2013, her career was booming, and she was repeatedly named a member of the list of "Hollywood's most obnoxious stars". People who hated her launched the "Hathahate" campaign, with viewers saying they hated her for being "too perfect, too hard, and never hiding her ambition to conquer Hollywood."
More than a decade later, Hathaway admitted in a new interview with Vanity Fair magazine in April that the Internet's hatred of her made her miss many opportunities to perform, "The director didn't dare to choose me, and the crew thought I was toxic." She spent a lot of time digesting the reality of being hated, and "I came to realize that 'how I feel' is more important than 'how I look'". From May 2024, Hathaway's two works will be released in streaming and cinemas. She seems to be re-accepted and loved by the Internet. Some media commented that people's hatred of Hathaway is a reflection of the dual factors of pop culture sexism and business operations.
Hathaway who was hated
In 2013, Hathaway co-hosted the Oscars and won the Best Supporting Actress award for the movie "Les Miserables". This is her first little golden figure. Before playing "Fantine" in Les Miserables, Hathaway was one of Hollywood's most popular young idols. She became popular for the Disney comedy "Princess Diary," Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain," and the movie "The Devil Wears Prada." In "The Queen Wears Prada", she played Andy, an assistant who was out of step with the glitzy world and devastated at the beginning of her career, and was rated by many viewers as "an indispensable chapter in post-millennial pop culture".
▲ "The Princess Diaries" starring Julie Andrews and Hathaway.
In order to get rid of the face of the "beautiful sweetheart", Hathaway took the initiative to shave her head and lose ten kilograms in "Les Miserables". She didn't expect that when she chanted "My dream has come true" on the Oscar stage, it would be the beginning of a nightmare. Crushable, a blogging site that reports celebrity anecdotes, criticized Hathaway after the Oscars for "something very uncomfortable": "It's not like she's real." Her mouth is too big, her eyes are too dark, she's too skinny and we don't like it. Hathaway, we hate you. Internet users launched the hashtag "Hate Selve," criticizing her image as "too perfect" and the enthusiasm she gave to interviews as "all faked." In 2013, the San Francisco Chronicle named Hathaway the number one "Most Hated Celebrity of the Year." Even actor James Franco, who co-hosted the Oscars with Hathaway, admitted in an interview: "I've heard the label 'Hate Selve.' ”
"Why do we suddenly hate Anne Hathaway?" said a 2013 article in The New York Times, why did the actress, who has a bubbly personality and is recognized as an acting talent, so disgusted by audiences overnight? Hathaway has a perfect face, flawless skin, big watery eyes, and a slim figure. She is one of the most striking flowers in Hollywood. She seems to be a mirror of our own inadequacies. Hathaway's father was a lawyer and her mother was a former actress who gave up her career to take care of a pair of children. As a result, Hathaway "dreamed of being an actor who was successful enough to support his family." Several directors she has worked with recalls that Hathaway would do a lot of preparation for the role she was about to play, "with a level of sophistication that can sometimes be frightening."
Her quest for perfection became the main reason for the criticism. "Everything she does seems to have been carefully planned, calculated, or rehearsed. Her unreality was captured by all. People slammed her Oscar acceptance speech as "hypocritical", and the paparazzi photographed her in a New York bookstore picking out books on healthy eating and balance, accusing her of "that's pretending, she can't really read." While filming "The Princess Diaries," Hathaway saw Julie Andrews, the famous actress who played the Queen, signing photos on set every day to give to fans. But when she did, she was criticized by the newspaper for "feeling too good about herself". Because of the attack and abuse from a large number of audiences, Hathaway did not receive any performance invitations for two years after "Les Miserables", and only participated in the dubbing of cartoons and documentaries, and did not have the opportunity to appear. In an interview with Vanity Fair magazine in April, she said that the name-calling not only brought emotional depression but also scared off many opportunities for collaboration. "Even if I won an Oscar, there were still a lot of people who didn't want to give me a role because they were afraid that hiring me would bring a group of abusive audiences. ”
Ten years of transformation
It wasn't until 2014 that director Christopher Nolan invited Hathaway to play a scientist in Interstellar. "He didn't care about the voices on the internet, and I don't know if he understood at the time that giving me a date was seen as supporting me. Without this contract, I wouldn't be where I am today. "Interstellar" was so well received that Hathaway reappeared in front of the big screen. She went on to shoot films based on true stories, such as The Intern and Ocean's 8. Hathaway said that getting pregnant, giving birth, quitting alcohol, and acting in a Broadway stage show adapted her life and people's perception of her. "I've found that if I'm happy all the way, people think I'm being hypocritical. I used to try to maintain my perfect life until people told me that I didn't have to be graceful all the time. What pains me is that I so crave something, yet keep doubting myself and wondering if I'm doing something wrong as I move towards it. Today, I don't care about anything on the web anymore. The internet has nothing to do with me. ”
▲Hathaway's new film "Imagination of You".
In May, Hathaway's romantic comedy "Imagination of You" will be launched on the Amazon streaming platform. In the field of romantic comedies with fine market divisions, "Imagination of You" is a relatively rare theme of sister-brother love - a 40-year-old single mother with a failed marriage accompanies her daughter to a music festival to watch a performance, and unexpectedly falls in love with the world's most popular 24-year-old idol singer. It's very different from the romance movies Hathaway watched as a teenager, "Pretty Woman." She said at the film promotion that "Imagination of You" shows women's active grasp and pursuit of love, and they are no longer the object of gaze. "I know that young men are encouraged to pursue their desires, and young women are encouraged to be pursued by men. Men are active, women are passive. I always want to be the active one, which makes me seem very unsociable. "The dislike for her has vanished. In 2024, Hathaway's image of a perfect, active woman was lamented by young fans born after 2000 that "there is no aging at all, elegance, and perfection".
"If you haven't caught up with the trends, we don't hate Hathaway now. The Independent wrote, "Hathaway, like Taylor Swift, is just a projection of society's many criticisms of women." The internet once preferred a "sassy and goofy actress" like Jennifer Lawrence to Hathaway, saying in interviews that "weight loss is stupid" and wrestling her skirt in excitement when she received the Oscar for Best Actress.
▲Jennifer Lawrence and Anne Hathaway
"The way the audience treats Hathaway, or all female stars, is hostile to women. The news website Vox wrote, "There is a standard for the life cycle of a female Hollywood star. In the first stage, people were amazed by their beauty and talent. In the second stage, they were promoted to high places, appeared on the cover of every magazine, and appeared on every talk show. In the third stage, people hate them because they are everywhere and everything they do is wrong. In the fourth stage – it usually takes a while for them to disappear on their own initiative – that people remember their beauty. When a woman shows great ambition, she is despised. For women, it's only worth celebrating when an achievement seems effortless. Once we saw their efforts – when Lawrence was cute like a gimmick and Hathaway was nerdy like 'in dire need of recognition', we started to hate them. In 2013, Vice News called some celebrity fan groups and asked if they hated Hathaway, "everybody has a lot to say," but asked if there were any bad things to say about Lawrence, and "not one." A few years later, Hathaway got rid of infamy and reappeared on the big screen, but Lawrence was scolded for refusing to apologize after the leak of his private photos and closing his social account comments, everything was like a reincarnation game that is difficult to end.
The content comes from "Weekend Pictorial"
Written by TBCW
Editor — Kobayashi
Image — Getty
iWeekly Weekend Pictorial Exclusive Manuscript, please do not reprint without permission