“Gross”: Anne Hathaway on having to “make out” with 10 auditioning actors

Now the producer and star of the romantic film The Idea of You, Anne Hathaway is looking back to the bad, old days of the genre.

To V magazine, she reveals that to find a suitable male co-star for an unnamed movie in the 2000s, she had to make out with 10 hopefuls in one day, calling that “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 adds. “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.”

Anne allows, “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.”

Speaking of, Hathaway described how they found her younger love interest for her character Solène in The Idea of You.

“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,” the performer recalled.

The actor who nabbed the role of boy band superstar Hayes Campbell, Nicholas Galitzine, was already on his way when he chose a song from the Alabama Shakes.

“And he saw me smile, so he relaxed, and we just started dancing … Nobody was trying to get the gig. We were just in a space, dancing,” Hathaway says.

She recalled, “I looked over and Michael Showalter, our director, was beaming. Spark!”
 

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