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Picture it: Anne Hathaway walks into a meeting with Christopher Nolan, arguably the most exacting director in Hollywood, dressed head to toe as a would-be Harley Quinn. Striped top. Weird little flat “Joker-ey” shoes. A full week of what she calls “demonic Harley Quinn energy” loaded and ready to fire. There’s just one problem. She’s auditioning for Catwoman.
That gloriously chaotic anecdote is making the rounds again, and honestly, it never gets old. Speaking with Josh Horowitz of Happy, Sad, Confused, Hathaway said, “I spent a week developing demonic Harley Quinn energy, I was wearing weird jester flats and a striped top… then Chris is like ‘so the part is Catwoman.”
Anne Hathaway: “I Changed Personalities Like a Psychopath”: Inside the Most Chaotic Catwoman Audition Ever
So how did she end up so gloriously off-base? By her own account, she assumed Michelle Pfeiffer’s turn as Catwoman was too iconic to even attempt to follow, so she never considered it a possibility. Reasonable logic! Wrong conclusion. Hathaway has said she showed up in a Vivienne Westwood top with stripes going everywhere, flashing Nolan what she hoped read as Harley’s unhinged little smiles, fully committed to the bit.
Then came the record scratch. About an hour into the meeting, Nolan casually noted that he was sure he didn’t need to tell her, but the part was Catwoman. Cue the fastest internal reinvention in audition history. As Hathaway put it, “Now ok, we’re slinky. We’re slinky. And I hate my shirt. I love my shirt, but I hate it right now. We’re slinky.”
And here’s the kicker: she got the job anyway. Hathaway described the pivot as changing personalities “like a psychopath,” and clearly it worked, because she went on to deliver one of the most beloved big-screen Catwomen ever. The Dark Knight Rises remains the highest-grossing Batman film ever, topping $1 billion worldwide with an 87% Rotten Tomatoes score, and Hathaway’s Selina Kyle was singled out as one of its most entertaining elements, with Vanity Fair crowning her the best Catwoman on screen.
As for the role that got away, Harley Quinn didn’t stay off the big screen for long. Just a few years later, Margot Robbie made the character her own in Suicide Squad, going on to cement herself as the definitive live-action Harley across Birds of Prey and The Suicide Squad. It’s fun to imagine a Nolan-flavored version of the character in Hathaway’s hands, but the jester mallet ultimately found its perfect owner.
The timing of the story’s resurgence isn’t an accident. Hathaway is currently deep in the press cycle for Nolan’s The Odyssey, where she plays Penelope, queen of Ithaca, marking her third collaboration with the director after The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar. The film opens July 17, which means a working relationship that kicked off with one delightfully confused audition room has quietly become one of the most reliable actor-director pairings in prestige blockbuster cinema. Not bad for a woman who showed up dressed as the wrong villain.
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