Anne Hathaway on Christopher Nolan's advice for The Dark Knight Rises

In a recent interaction with Hugh Jackman, the actor shared how she prepared for the role and the advice that Nolan gave her before beginning work on the film
Anne Hathaway
Anne Hathaway

In Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, Anne Hathaway managed to pull off the most faithful interpretation of the DC Comics character Selina Kyle/Catwoman since Michelle Pfeiffer's portrayal of the same in Batman Returns (1992).

In a recent interaction with Hugh Jackman for Variety's Actors on Actors series, Hathaway shared how she prepared for the role and the advice that Nolan gave her before beginning work on the film. Jackman has worked with Nolan in The Prestige.

Hathway told Jackman that Nolan's approach to filmmaking is one of her favourite ones. "He’s broken it down to its most minimal, but also his movies are just so huge and ornate. That combination of really being intentional about what it was that we were doing — and also, he’s just so inspiring,” she said.

“You know how you have those jobs, and you just go, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to work again because this was such fun',” Hathaway added. “I’m such a director nerd. I love just seeking out the best directors I can and then just watching them."

Hathaway said Nolan’s advice was to get strong enough to play Selina. “Chris sat me down and said, ‘It has nothing to do with your appearance. If we shoot tomorrow, I’d be so happy'.”

For reference, Nolan asked her to look at Joseph Gordon-Levitt's experience in Inception. For a four-day stunt, the actor had trained for 12 weeks because he wanted to get every shot done. Hathaway recalled Nolan telling her to do as much of the stunt work as she could. "I need you to be strong enough to do that. I can’t have you be one of those actors that does one take, two takes and then you’re too tired. I want you to do everything," the director had told her.

Hathaway also shared an interesting piece of trivia about Nolan's shooting process. “He doesn’t allow chairs, and his reasoning is, if you have chairs, people will sit, and if they’re sitting, they’re not working,” she said. “I mean, he has these incredible movies in terms of scope and ambition and technical prowess and emotion. It always arrives at the end under schedule and under budget. I think he’s onto something with the chair thing.”

Hathaway was last seen in The Last Thing He Wanted and Dark Waters. She was also part of the recent Amazon anthology series Modern Love. Her upcoming films include James Gray's Armageddon Time, in which she will be sharing the screen with Cate Blanchett, Robert De Niro, Oscar Isaac, and Donald Sutherland, aside from Robert Zemeckis' The Witches (the second adaptation of Roald Dahl's book of the same name) and a Sesame Street movie.

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