The current awards season marks a decade since Anne Hathaway, a contender this year for her role in James Gray’s Armageddon timewon a wealth of supporting actress awards – including the BAFTA, Golden Globe, SAG Award and Oscar – for her turn as Fantine in Les Miserables. The actress had already established herself as a movie star in films like The Princess Diary, The devil wears Prada and Brokeback Mountainand she scored her first Oscar nomination, for Best Actress, with 2008’s Rachel is getting married.
Oscar gold would arrive five years later, with Tom Hooper’s screen adaptation of the stage musical, in which Hathaway, like a starving sex worker, burrows onto the screen, loses her hair and teeth and riffs out the gut-wrenching “I Dreamed a Dream” before dying. Her performance was hailed as a standout among an all-star cast led by Hugh Jackman and featuring Russell Crowe, Eddie Redmayne, Amanda Seyfried and Helena Bonham Carter.
“Hathaway dominates and screams fear like the doomed Fantine,” wrote Todd McCarthy in his THR review of the Universal film, adding how she “bravely gets dirty and has her hair cut off on screen”.
Hathaway fought hard for the role, which her own mother had played years earlier on the Broadway production’s first national tour. ‘My mother and I were talking about the idea of Fantine lighting a match, and she’s watching it burn down. And she has to blow it out and let the darkness in,” Hathaway explained THR‘s Actress Roundtable in December 2012. During the 13 days she was on set, Hathaway essentially starved herself (“consisting on meager servings of oatmeal to lose 25 pounds,” as THR described it), in addition to working with a sexual slavery researcher to immerse herself in the role.
Les Miserables was nominated in eight categories at the 2013 Academy Awards and won three. As Hathaway took the stage to receive her award, she acknowledged the realization of a dream and began her speech with, “It came true.”
THR’s Todd McCarthy praised Anne Hathaway in his review, but found the film, with its melodramatic and intense performances, “heavy, if huge, monotonous”.
This story first appeared in a standalone December issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
