GQ (UK) - Article

Queen of all she surveys

From Disney teen princess to divine ruler in Tim Burton's new Alice In Wonderland blockbuster: Anne Hathaway is a true Hollywood blue blood. Paradoxically, she's also the go-to girl-next-door, as smart as she is sexy and as admired by women as she is adored by men. Here, Queen Anne grants GQ an exclusive audience and talks Scientology, Scrabble, quantum physics... oh, and the secret art of on-screen undressing

Anne Hathaway is no Angelina Jolie. The big difference? She's non-threatening. Or at least she is from your seat at the local multiplex. You see, women love Anne Hathaway. Ask any woman within reach. Ask a friend. Ask the pretty waitress in Scott's. Ask your mother; your sister; your grandmother. See, told you - they simply adore her. Can you ever imagine your girlfriend calling out (as mine did), "Tell her that I love her!" as you head off to catch a plane to go and have lunch with, say, Miss Jolie? I very much doubt it. Angelina is far too threatening; too dangerous; too wily.

But little, doe-eyed, butter-wouldn't-melt Annie Hathaway? She's so cute! She's a girl's girl, she's every woman's BFF. She's chummy.She's fun. She's Carrie Bradshaw's crib notes on what girlfriends are there for. She's the woman who had every girl's dream job (and wardrobe) in The Devil Wears Prada. She's Becoming Jane. She's Bride Wars. She's The Princess Diaries, for Christ's sake! She's every insecure, needy woman's Empress of Empathy. She's a large tub of chocolate-chip, cookie-dough ice cream with Maltesers sprinkles. She's Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany's. She's the Coldplay singles box sets rather than Lady Gaga's The Fame Monster. She's safe. She's sweet. Right? Right?

Well, if Anne Hathaway - 27, from the quiet, affluent suburb of Millburn, New Jersey - is so prim, so naive, so wide-eyed and so innocent, then what on God's earth is she doing sitting opposite me, mid-way through a long, hot, lazy lunch in Los Angeles, flashing her hazel eyes while gently tonguing, yes, tonguing, the back of her china-white palm like a tip-hungry stripper at Le Crazy Horse? It's an act that's head-swimmingly discombobulating. The actress' supposed façade of niceness has been pulled back - just for a split second - to reveal something far, far wilder. For Anne it's her very own SuBo moment.

"We were talking about kissing," I offer clumsily, shattering the crackling sexual menace in a voice that, on hearing the words aloud, suddenly sounds about as come-hither as a car's sat-nav command. Anne, perhaps sensing my inability to form a proper sentence, takes the lead: "You have to leave your mouth open a little bit..." she purrs, making me squirm into uncharted levels of prudishness, closing her eyes and smudging her plump red lips against her own left hand, which she's holding tenderly with her right as she might the face of a co-star. "Open up," Anne suggests breathlessly as the earth seems to spin ever so slightly faster on its axis. "More, more, ever so lightly... otherwise you're going to be getting smooshy," she advises. "Now... slow it down... just a little bit..."

Sadly, here endeth the lesson on "How To Screen Kiss Successfully With Anne Hathaway". I come round, somewhat sheepishly, my cheeks flushed and my eyes glazed. "If you're both unattached and you get along, of course kissing in a movie is fun," she tells me. "But you can never get truly deep down and into it. Well, I can't. Jennifer Garner - now that girl can movie kiss. I gotta say that girl can really give it some up there..."

Read the full interview with Anne Hathaway and see all the photos in the March 2010 issue of British GQ, out on 4 February.

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