Anne Hathaway was moved to tears by the audience’s reaction to her new film, The Idea of You, at the SXSW Film & TV Festival on Saturday, March 16.
The actress, 41, cried as she thanked the crowd for “being so connected” to the rom-com, which costars Nicholas Galitzine as 24-year-old boy band member Hayes who unexpectedly falls for Hathaway’s 40-year-old single mom Solène.
“I can’t talk,” Hathaway told the audience, according to footage shared by Variety, as a fan called out, “I love you!”
“I love you so much,” she added.“You have no idea the gift that you’ve just given us with your responsiveness by being so connected to every little nuance in this. I will never forget this screening.”
“I love you so much!” Anne Hathaway is in tears at the SXSW premiere of “The Idea of You.” pic.twitter.com/OGsUXhIr3D
— Variety (@Variety) March 17, 2024
Hathaway continued to explain that she couldn’t help but say yes to playing Solène after producers Cathy Schulman and Gabrielle Union came to her with the story. “For some reason, we talk about coming-of-age stories as being something that happens to you in the earliest part of your life, and I don’t know about you, but I feel like I keep blooming,” Hathaway told the audience of showcasing the May-December romance.
She added: “I don’t want to be pigeonholed and don’t want to be placed in a box of what type of films I have to be making because of my age, gender and because I won an Oscar. I want to have fun, dammit. It speaks to me.”
Galitzine, 29, was also moved by the crowd’s reaction to the film and said that his chemistry with Hathaway was immediately palpable in the audition process.
“These rooms can be extremely intimidating and unnatural, but there was something almost spiritual that happened there, whereby I felt this immediate connection to Annie,” he said. “We had a simpatico, a shared sense of humor. It was just very easy. I remember leaving that room thinking, ‘Regardless of what happens with this, I am so proud of this special thing that happened there.’ They gave me a call the next day: ‘We want you to be a part of this movie.’”
Hathaway — who wore a silver Patou minidress detailed with geometric accents on the red carpet before changing into a more casual look for the post-screening Q&A — said that although they were texting and leaving each other voice memos before shooting began, the first day on set in Europe was really a “bonding ritual” for her and Galitzine.
“That first day, there was a moment where we had to jump into freezing cold water and pretend like it was the most sensual Mediterranean bath … once we both got in there, we just looked at each other like, ‘OK, we are doing this.’ And we found our shivery sexiness together,” she told the crowd. “From that moment to the last moment 20-some odd hours later, I just looked and was like, ‘I’m in good hands on this one. I got a great partner.’ We could not have landed better, and I still feel that way.”
The Idea of You, which hits Amazon Prime on May 2, is based on a book by Robinne Lee and directed by Michael Showalter, known for The Big Sick and The Eyes of Tammy Faye.
