Alice in Wonderland Press Conference - Anne Hathaway, The White Queen
On Playing the Good Queen to Helena Bonham Carter's Bad Queen:Anne Hathaway: "[...]That was one of the most fun parts about my character was this freedom that Tim gave me, from the first conversation we had, where 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. They come from the same place.'"
"I thought, 'Oh, how fun if my character has sort of a hidden psychosis and is dangerous and 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 kind of has a murderous streak that comes out when she’s around weaponry?' So, it wasn’t necessarily that they were opposites. They were just sisters who were different."
The Lasting Impact of Alice in Wonderland and Jabberwocky:
Anne Hathaway: "I’m glad you just reminded me about Jabberwocky because when I was in 5th grade, I had a teacher and he made the entire class memorize Jabberwocky and perform it. So, during the battle sequence, I made Tim let me recite the poem. He literally looked at me and said, 'Well it's not going to be in the film.' And I said, 'I know, but just for my own sense of completion in my life, please let me do this."[p] "I didn't read Alice until I was in college. I was reading a lot of [Vladimir] Nabokov and actually one of his big inspirations was Lewis Carroll so I thought, 'Before I get too deep into him, I’ll read Lewis Carroll' - then I never went back to Nabokov. So that’s when I read it, and I was really moved by it."
"I mean, she’s a very emotional character and a lot of people feel kind of confused at 19 [about] who they think they are vs. who they want to be. You struggle with a sense of identity then, and at other times in your life. And I really 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? So that was my experience."
On Playing The White Queen as a Punk Rock Vegan Pacifist:
Anne Hathaway: "The pacifist thing was in the script. My character has taken a vow of non-violence. But, it was also in the script that when she talks about that, she hits a bug and is like [she enjoys killing it]. So I thought about it. That kind of gave me the idea that she’s taken this vow against her will, that she recognizes that her sister is sick and believes that a means to an end is cutting people’s heads off and it’s kind of her default setting. I’m like, 'I don’t want her to be in charge, so I guess I have to be in charge.'"
"But, I like the idea that my character probably, left to her own devices, might not have wanted to be Queen. So then I started to think about who she was in her ‘off-Queen’ time. And then I realized she spends a lot of time in the kitchen and the non-violence thing and her being a vegan and then I just imagined her in mosh pits – not really punching anyone but really butting against people very hard. And then I thought she’d like, for some reason...I like Blondie so I thought, you know, she’s blonde, so that was kind of obvious. But I still wanted her to have a regal thing so I watched…there’s a Greta Garbo movie. I watched a lot of her silent films because I still think no one has ever quite moved on film the way she did. I mean, 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 and she’s utterly real in it. I don’t remember. I think it’s called The Loose Woman or The Temptress. She arrives on a train and she’s beautiful. I don’t remember what the name of the film is now. I’m sorry."
Would She Have Minded Being a CG Character - If Tim Burton Wanted Her to Be?:
Anne Hathaway: "Honestly, I would do anything if Tim… I'm fond of saying that I would have played a mushroom in this if that’s the way he saw me in it. So, I would have happily donned 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 as well. I have no preference."
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Alice in Wonderland hits theaters on March 5, 2010.
More on Alice in Wonderland: Mia Wasikowska / Johnny Depp / Director Tim Burton / Helena Bonham Carter
