Anne Hathaway finally learned how to breathe while preparing for her new film ‘Mother Mary.' It was her most challenging role yet.

Yahoo

8 hours ago

Anne Hathaway is a master at her craft, but that doesn't mean it always comes easy.
In an interview for the August issue of Vogue, Hathaway detailed the work that went into preparing for her starring role in the upcoming melodrama Mother Mary. In the David Lowery-directed film, Hathaway plays the titular pop star, who's so famous she's considered more of a deity than a human being. As Mother Mary spirals out, she flees and finds solace in an old friend, played by Michaela Coel.
Bringing Mother Mary to life was, according to Hathaway, 'transformational.' The veteran actress admitted that taking on the role meant surrendering her ego.
'I had to submit to being a beginner,' she told Vogue. 'The humility of that — showing up every day knowing you're going to suck. And it has to be okay. You're not 'bad.' You're just a beginner. Getting to that mindset — I had to shed some things that were hard to shed. It was welcome. But it was hard, the way transformational experiences can be hard.'
After recognizing that she'd have to 'become material [Lowery] could craft with,' as she told Vogue, Hathaway did exactly that. Mother Mary, she added, wasn't a role she could just 'perform.' To prepare for the movie, which wrapped filming in Cologne, Germany, in 2024, Hathaway endured nearly two years of daily dance classes, which at one point ran from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. The 42-year-old star also went through intensive voice lessons so she'd be able to belt out the Mother Mary songs written by Taylor Swift-approved producer Jack Antonoff and Brat superstar Charli XCX.
'You can't tell me you're angry; show me. Proprioception. That was the training, getting Annie out of her head,' Dani Vitale, the film's choreographer, told Vogue of what she told Hathaway upon meeting her. 'I remember that first day, being like, Oh no. Because she's like a doll, you know? So pretty, so graceful. I thought, Oh God, I have to break this person.'
But continued dance training with Vitale helped Hathaway become more in tune with her own body. Hathaway, perhaps most notably, unlocked a crucial skill: The ability to breathe.
'I finally learned how to breathe,' Hathaway told Vogue. 'My body was so locked up — I literally couldn't take a deep breath. I'd been trying to open that space for years and I thought it was physically impossible. All my breath, it was stuck.'
Hathaway has a history of throwing herself into her roles. For her 2022 Apple TV+ series WeCrashed, Hathaway went on a raw vegan diet to imitate the lifestyle of Rebekah Neumann, the wife of WeWork founder Adam Neumann, whom she played in the miniseries. The New York native, while preparing for the role of Fantine in 2012's Les Misérables, lost 25 pounds in a matter of weeks. (She's since called the weight loss taxing on her body and her brain.)
But working on Mother Mary feels like even more of a departure for Hathaway, who previously spoke about her fierce dedication.
'I'd rather not be unseated on the day [of filming] by my anxiety,' the actress told Vanity Fair in 2024. 'Part of the way I can tell myself that I am okay is by having such a complete level of preparation that if I get a critical voice in my head, you can quiet it down by saying that you did everything you could to prepare.'
Hathaway went into Mother Mary knowing that the project would be different from anything she'd ever done before — and she clearly rose to the occasion. While a release date for the film has yet to be set, it seems likely that fans will be in for a treat.