Anne Hathaway has made a name for herself in a string of hit Hollywood movies. But it turns out that in her personal life she has been going by a different name all along!
The revelation came up Tuesday during Hathaway’s appearance on The Tonight Show. Host Jimmy Fallon mentioned that her good friends call her “Annie,” and he asked whether he should refer to her as “Anne” or “Annie.”
The star wasted no time telling him, “Call me Annie.” She followed this up by encouraging the world to do the same thing: “Everybody, everybody, call me Annie, please!”
Rather than move on to another topic, Hathaway decided to clear the air surrounding her name. She revealed that when she was only 14 years old, she performed in a commercial and was forced to get a Screen Actors Guild card. When they prompted her for her name, she told them “Anne Hathaway” instead of the more familiar “Annie Hathaway.”
She said that at the time, this seemed like “the right choice” for her to make. But at her young age, she didn’t realize the implications of her choice. As Hathaway told Fallon, “It never occurred to me that for the rest of my life people would call me Anne.”
Hathaway went on to tell an anecdote that may seem familiar to many of her fans. According to her, the only person in her life that calls her “Anne” is her mother. And her mother only calls her that when she’s “really mad at me … like really mad.”
Unfortunately, this means she has internalized the idea that someone calling her “Anne” is actually yelling at her or mad at her. And because her professional name is “Anne Hathaway,” she constantly feels like the people around her are “going to yell at me.”
“The truth is, no one’s comfortable calling me Anne ever,” Hathaway claims. “It doesn’t fit. I’m an Annie.”
While Hathaway may want to simply go by “Annie,” it doesn’t look like the world will stop calling her “Anne” anytime soon. With ambitious movies like The Witches (which premiered on HBO Max last fall) and topical movies like Locked Down (premiering on HBO Max on January 14), she’s continuing to make a name for herself as a talented and prolific actor… even if it’s not a name she particularly likes!