Anne Jacqueline Hathaway (born November 12, 1982) is an American actress. After several stage roles, she appeared in the 1999 television series Get Real. She came to prominence after playing Mia Thermopolis in the Disney film The Princess Diaries (2001) and in its 2004 sequel. Since then, Hathaway has starred in dramatic films such as Havoc and Brokeback Mountain, in 2005. She has also starred in The Devil Wears Prada (2006) alongside Meryl Streep and in Becoming Jane (2007) as Jane Austen.
In 2008, she won several awards for her performance in Rachel Getting Married and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. In 2010, she starred in the box office hits Valentine's Day, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, and Love and Other Drugs and won an Emmy Award for her voice-over performance on The Simpsons. In 2011, she had a voice role in the animated film Rio, and starred in Lone Scherfig's adaptation of One Day. In 2012, she portrayed Selina Kyle in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises and Fantine in Tom Hooper's Les Misérables. For the latter, she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture, a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role, a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and is currently nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. People magazine named her one of its breakthrough stars of 2001,[1] and she appeared on its list of the world's 50 Most Beautiful People in 2006.[2]
Early life
Anne Hathaway was born November 12, 1982 in Brooklyn, New York.[3] Her father, Gerald Thomas Hathaway, is a lawyer, and her mother, Kathleen Ann "Kate" (née McCauley), is an actress who inspired Hathaway to follow in her footsteps.[4] Hathaway's mother played Fantine in the first U.S. tour of Les Misérables.[5] When she was six years old, the family moved to Millburn, New Jersey, which is where she grew up.[6] Hathaway has an older brother, Michael, and a younger brother, Thomas. She is of mostly Irish and French ancestry, with distant Native American and German roots.[7]
Hathaway was raised Catholic with what she considered "really strong values", and has stated she wanted to be a nun during her childhood.[6][8] However, she decided against it at the age of 15, after learning her brother, Michael, was gay.[8] She has stated: "I realised my older brother was gay, and I couldn't support a religion that didn't support my brother. Now I call myself a nondenominational Christian, because I haven't found the religion for me."[9] In 2009, Hathaway stated that her religious beliefs are "a work in progress".[8][10]
Hathaway attended Brooklyn Heights Montessori School and Wyoming Elementary School in Millburn.[11] Hathaway graduated from Millburn High School, where she participated in many school plays; her high school performance as Winnifred in Once Upon a Mattress gained her a Paper Mill Playhouse Rising Star Award nomination for Best Performance by a High School Actress. During this time, Hathaway was in plays including Jane Eyre and Gigi at New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse.[12] She spent several semesters studying as an English major and Women's Studies minor at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York before transferring to New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, referring to her college enrollment as one of her best decisions, because she enjoyed being with others who were trying to "grow up".[13] She also studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Hathaway was the first teenager admitted into The Barrow Group Theater Company's acting program.[14]
A soprano, Hathaway performed in 1998 and 1999 with the All-Eastern U.S. High School Honors Chorus at Carnegie Hall and has performed in plays at Seton Hall Preparatory School in West Orange, New Jersey. Three days after her 1999 performance at Carnegie Hall, she was cast in the short-lived Fox television series Get Real at the age of 16.[12]
Hathaway is a trained stage actress and has stated that she prefers performing on stage to film roles.[6] Her acting style has been compared to those of Judy Garland and Audrey Hepburn.[15] She cites Garland as one of her favorite actresses[11] and Meryl Streep as her idol.[16]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Hathaway | 
