Anne Hathaway: "Catwoman was an impossible dream and now it's part of my life"
The Dark Knight: The Legend Rises, the latest installment in Christopher Nolan's bat-man saga, hits theaters this Friday with the presence of Anne Hathaway in the role of Catwoman, "an impossible dream" for the actress, as he said in an interview. For the Oscar candidate for Love and Other Disasters (2010) it was not easy to get that coveted character and for whom Jessica Biel, Blake Lively and Natalie Portman, among others, fought.
"It was a long process of three and a half months from the
first meeting until I got it. Then I felt complete happiness and relief,"
said Hathaway. "It was one of those moments that you think is too beautiful
to be real, a dream that I would not even allow myself to have because it
seemed impossible to me and now it is part of my life," she added.
Hathaway's Catwoman, encased in a tight leather suit and
as armed and dangerous as Bob Kane drew her in the comics, is one of the
great additions to the franchise alongside the faces of the evil Bane (Tom
Hardy) and policeman John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and certainly the
one that would draw the most comparisons due to previous incarnations of the
character.
Actresses like Julie Newmar, Lee Meriwether or Eartha Kitt gave
life to the cat in the popular television series about Batman from the 60s,
until Michelle Pfeiffer immortalized that role in Batman Returns (1992).
Later, Halle Berry also dared with her in 2004. "The comparisons did not
worry me because Chris has shown that he can successfully reinvent Gotham
and her characters," said the interpreter.
"It was established that this was not going to be a problem.
The pressure came from feeling that she really was part of this world. The
first two films are extraordinary and the bar was very high," added
Hathaway.
In The Dark Knight: The Legend Rises, the actress brings to
life Selina Kyle, a white-collar thief who happens to be a true femme fatale
for billionaire Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), whose actions are essential
for Batman to return to the fray. after eight years of silence. "I still
don't know what to think of my performance because I haven't thought about
it, but it's one of the best movies I've seen or taken part in. I feel very
lucky and privileged to participate in this experience," said the
actress.
Hathaway, who sports a very short hair after finishing the
filming of Les Miserables, revealed that she has a hard time seeing herself
on screen. She confessed that she needs to see the movies that she shoots of
her three times to give an opinion about her and that five years pass to
mature a decision about her acting.
In this case, moreover, she had to overcome the fact of being
surrounded by artists she deeply admires, such as Sir Michael Caine, Morgan
Freeman or Gary Oldman. "I was dying to tell them how much I liked them in
depending on which movies that changed my life, but I calmed down. You
realize that you don't know them, that you have no relationship with them
until you start creating it. Some days I had to rub my eyes to realize that
what I was doing was true,
Of all of them, with whom she shared the most time, it was with
Christian Bale. Her characters meet, attract each other, confront each other
and end up teaming up to face the threat of Bane, a terrorist who has
plunged Gotham into absolute anarchy and who plans to devastate the city. "I
love Christian. He is a great, funny and very interesting guy. His way of
approaching roles is unique. He is a thinker and I am happy to spend time
with him," said the actress, who had to take her agility for the role. and
strength to limits that she herself did not know she could reach.
"It was a complete transformation. I wanted to do the fight
scenes by myself and I prepared to fight for several days. At the end of the
shoot I could spend several hours doing it with ease," Hathaway said,
recalling that she also did all that in heels.
