Anne Hathaway is an American actress known for her roles in The Princess Diaries movies and Brokeback Mountain. The daughter of Gerald Hathaway, a lawyer, and the actress Kate McCauley, Anne Hathaway was born on November 12, 1982 in Brooklyn, New York. It was her mother who inspired her to become an actress. Anne Hathaway grew up in Millburn, New Jersey with a strict Catholic upbringing, and attended Millburn High School where she performed in many school plays. She studied for several semesters at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York before transferring to New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.
A trained stage actress, Anne Hathaway was a member of Barrow Group Theater Company's acting program and was the first teenager to be admitted in the group. In 1998, she performed twice with the All Eastern U.S. High School Honors Chorus at the Carnegie Hall. After her performance, she was immediately chosen as cast in the 1999 short-lived television series Get Real.
Hathaway had her first major role in The Other Side of Heaven in 2001. It was also in this year that she landed her most prominent role as the gawky tenth grader, Mia Thermopolis, who discovers that she is a princess of a small European country, in Disney’s family comedy, The Princess Diaries. She also appeared in family films Ella Enchanted and The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement. In 2005, Hathaway decided to break away from her wholesome roles and appeared in the adult-themed films, Havoc and Brokeback Mountain, requiring her to do nude scenes. In 2006, she co-starred with Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, in which she played the aspiring journalist Andrea Sachs who works as an assistant to New York’s most prominent fashion editor Miranda Priestly. Hathaway also played as Jane in the 2007 historical film, Becoming Jane.