Interview: Anne Hathaway for Alice in Wonderland
By Krystal Clark
Academy Award nominated actress Anne Hathaway will be a far cry from her dramatic role in Rachel Getting Married when she appears in Tim Burton’s adaptation of Alice in Wonderland as the White Queen. Hathaway has come a long way since The Princess Diaries by landing roles that constantly challenge her as an actress and this character is no different. She plays one of the good guys in the film, who seeks the aid of Alice to defeat her maniacal sister.
As the White Queen Hathaway is a stark contrast to Helena Bonham Carter’s Red Queen. She’s fair skinned, fair haired, and free spirited in every sense of the word. As an audience we see the character as the victim of her sister’s wicked ways, but Hathaway doesn’t think she’s that innocent. According to the actress, there’s something else brewing beneath the surface of the White Queen that’s a lot more devious than anything we could ever imagine.
Unlike a lot of people, Anne Hathaway didn’t read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a child but as an adult, so her first impression of the story was far from the norm.
I was really moved by it, she’s a very emotional character and I think a lot of people feel confused at 19 years old. Who they are? Who they think they are? Who they want to be? You struggle with a sense of identity then and other times in your life. I read the book from that perspective as a girl who’s trying to find her identity, which is great because that’s what the movie really focuses on. Which Alice are you? That’s my experience.
Even though she didn’t get on board with the mythology until later, she was familiar with the Jabberwocky character and shared an experience she had as a child that ended up resurfacing on set for the film.
I’m glad you reminded me about Jabberwocky because when I was in 5th grade I had teacher and he made the entire class memorize Jabberwocky and perform it. I made Tim [Burton] during the battle sequence, I made him let me recite the poem and he was like, ‘it’s not going to be in the film,’ I’m like, ‘I know but just for my own sense of completion, please let me do this.’
Hathaway’s version of the White Queen has been described as “a punk-rock vegan pacifist” who was inspired by bands like Blondie. On the surface it sounds like a weird mix of things that have absolutely nothing to do with Wonderland, but Hathaway begs to differ.
The pacifist thing was in the script. My character has taken a vowel of non-violence, but it was [also] in the script that when she talks about that she hits a bug and then it’s like… I thought about. That gave me the idea that she’s taken this vow against her will, that she recognizes that her sister is sick and believes that an ends to a means is cutting people heads off. It’s her default setting. I’m just like, I don’t want her to be in charge, so I guess I have to be in charge.
Hathaway’s inspiration for the character came from a very random, very eclectic mix of pop culture icons.
I like the idea that my character probably left to her devices, might not have wanted to be queen. Then I started to think about who she was when she was in her off queen time. She spends a lot of time in the kitchen, and I kind of imagined her in mosh-pits and not really punching anyone, but butting against people very hard. I like Blondie, so I thought, she’s blond, so that was kind of obvious, but I still wanted her to have a regal thing so there’s a Greta Garbo movie I watched because I still think no one has ever quite moved on film the way she did. Her whole body just looks like it’s breathing and it was a time where acting was very stylized to kind of be very over the top.
In the film, the White Queen is the exact opposite of her sister, and there’s an interesting dynamic between the two. Director Tim Burton didn’t want their portrayals to be cut and dry, good or bad. He wanted there to be moral ambiguity.
That was one the most fun parts about my character, there was this freedom Tim gave me from the first conversation we had. He said, ‘in Wonderland I don’t want anything to be all good or all bad, so I don’t want it to be the Red Queen is the bad one and you’re like the nice benevolent one who’s all good.’ So he said, ‘have fun exploring the relationship between the two of them that come from the same place.’ I thought, how fun, if my character has a sort of hidden psychosis.
She is interested in knives and things like that, and is kind of adorable on the outside and has tried very hard to become this good almost over the top positive creature, but underneath she has a murderous streak that comes out when she’s around weaponry. It wasn’t necessarily that they were opposites, they were just sisters who were different.
The White Queen is one of the few characters in the film that isn’t CGI. Unlike her co-stars Michael Sheen and Matt Lucas, Hathaway’s character appears the old school way using hair and makeup. We wanted to know if she would have preferred being a partially animated character as opposed to being live action.
Honestly, I would do anything. I’m fond of saying that I would have played a mushroom if that’s the way he [Tim] saw me. I would have happily dawned my green Onesie and been up in stilts. I would have just done anything to be in Wonderland, but I don’t know, it’s kind of nice to be a real person, I have no preference. I’m sorry, I don’t.
Alice in Wonderland opens in theaters nationwide on March 5th.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010 8:12PM
I'm sure it will be fascinating to watch. Lewis Carroll's wanted his niece, Alice, to be amused and undaunted by the idiocy of society they satirized. I imagine them sitting together in the parlor, watching the adults outside the window on the lawn, laughing and inventing their mischievous allegories. lol
Friday, March 5, 2010 1:37PM
Anne hathway really bothered me in this movie. She was so ungraceful and she never put her arms down. She seemed really uncomfortable with the role she had to play, like she didnt know what to do with herself. She needs to stick to more adult movies. No offense towards her.
Saturday, March 6, 2010 1:28PM
my daughter and i watched the movie and sure was so wonderful to see my favorite childhood character …it was beautiful and entertaining having a new twist in the story..we really enjoyed watching it and all the characters are great..especially the queen of hearts..she is so funny….
Saturday, March 6, 2010 1:33PM
i. like the movie. and it is the best movie i. like the queen of hearts and all of them in the story…
Sunday, March 7, 2010 10:16PM
Omg it drove me crazy the whole time. All I could think about was if she was capable of putting her arms down. She looked so awkward with her arms up in the air the whole time. Why on earth would Tim Burton make her character do that?
Tuesday, March 9, 2010 4:38AM
i believe she had her hands up the entire time to make the viewer see she struggled at the good/evil thing that burton was going for, her hands being raised constantly made them constantly in view and always with something to do..idle hands are the devils playground….
Saturday, March 13, 2010 9:57AM
The hands thing annoyed me too. I just hated watching her character…it really bothered me. I thought everyone else did a spectacular job, but Anne Hathaway…god. It's not just that she was holding her hands up, but her arms were at an angle that was just really bothersome; she could have lowered her hands at least a little, I don't know. It didn't work…the message with the whole good/evil idea with her hands didn't really seem successful.
Saturday, March 20, 2010 10:33AM
Anne Hathaway was the absolute lowlight in this movie and I'm shocked that Tim Burton picked her for this role. She was absolutely awful playing the white queen. I can't believe her character made it though the movie and wasnt cut or recast. She had no idea of what she was playing and her acting was worse than that of an 8 year old. She attempted ditzy and floaty and ended up with confused and annoying. After the first scene with her character I dreaded every time she came on screen. I think she tried to copy the elegance and grace of the White witch from The Wizard of Oz and failed miserably. She should be thoroughly ashamed of her performance
Sunday, March 21, 2010 3:56AM
I think people are tearing Anne Hathaway apart for no good reason. I personally think she was amazing in the movie, and was the perfect actress for the role. The whole reason that she seemed so awkward in that movie was because there was an internal struggle within the White Queen herself. She's trying so hard to be perfect and good, but because of her evil instinct, it's hard for her. If you can't look deeper into the characters and how they are supposed to act, then I feel bad for you. Almost all of the characters in that movie have something more intricate going on beneath the surface, and if you think Anne Hathaway was being unusual just because she wasn't sure how to act, then you didn't understand the character of the White Witch.
Sunday, March 28, 2010 2:30PM
yeah, I absolutely agree with you: she appears awkward just because she *wanted* to be as such, because her ambiguous role implied a subtle moral conflict which conformists can neither bother nor tolerate. People's irritated reactions to her character are a wonderful evidence that she was successful!
Saturday, April 10, 2010 11:56AM
I actually believe that she was a great addition to the movie. I completely agree with "Taylor", it wasn't Anne Hathaway acting as HERSELF. She was trying to show that sometimes fighting against yourself is difficult to do, but she absolutely understands her character and I'm very proud of her. Kudos to you, Anne! Oh, and the rest of the actors & actresses too.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 9:52PM
Many thanks to Tim Burton and his well selected cast who made what could easily have been a remake flop a delightful interpretation of a classic bit of English humorous literature.
The movie, in its opening, managed to cover the nature of the second daughters of Dean Liddell of Oxford rather well, and pay homage to the Rev. C.L. Dodson, and all in a matter of a few minutes.
Before seeing the movie I was wondering how the poem Jabberwocky would be delt with, but to my delight it became the objective of the movie. All in all a great interpretation of the Alice stories. Could easily have been 2 movies, one per book.
Regarding Anne Hathaway my only regret is that one day she might grow to old to play a princes or any other fairytale character. Comedy is fun surrealistic comedy is better.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011 12:47AM
white queen was awful. ruined the movie.