Every actor has an audition horror story, even the A-listers who star in your favorite films and TV shows. For years, Backstage has collected the best of the worst from today’s top performers. To make you feel a little less alone on your own journey to stardom, let’s look back at some iconic tales of in-the-room disasters, self-tape trip-ups, and chemistry reads gone wrong. Today’s callback: Anne Hathaway.
Today, she’s renowned for belting it out in “Les Misérables,” bringing sizzle to the screen in “The Idea of You,” and charming audiences in “The Devil Wears Prada”—a role she’s reprising for the long-awaited sequel. But Anne Hathaway was once just an aspiring performer with a penchant for bringing Mia Thermopolis–like clumsiness (pre-princess training, mind you) to the audition room.
Hathaway first got physical at what she calls an “appalling” dance audition, which she attended despite not being a dancer herself. “I love to dance, but I am not a dancer, and this was the day I learned the difference,” she told us. “It was awful! I couldn’t get the combination fast enough; when trying to dance, I couldn’t stop bumping into other people who rightfully wanted to murder me, I am sure.… My apologies to anyone I bruised that day.”
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Her reign of audition room collisions didn’t end there. At a later musical audition, Hathaway “pushed the casting director over.” “My character got very angry,” she said. “And I didn’t think I pushed him that hard, but suddenly I was in the scene and we were acting together, and I went to push him. It felt like I had barely tapped him, but he flew across the room.”
Still, these incidents didn’t stop Hathaway from building a career spanning blockbusters and prestige dramas alike, winning her Oscar, Emmy, Golden Globe, and Actor awards. And while she was famously the ninth choice for her iconic role in “The Devil Wears Prada,” she got the part—and delivered one of the most beloved performances of the mid-aughts.For aspiring actors hoping to follow in her (Chanel boot-clad) footsteps, Hathaway’s journey demonstrates that the joy of celebrating others’ wins and the power of perseverance can be, to quote Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), “groundbreaking” (albeit hopefully not bonebreaking).