Hating Anne Hathaway

We can say so much about how Ricky Lo handled his controversial interview with Anne Hathaway.

But, checking other sites after searching for “Anne Hathaway” yielded interesting results that bear similar “encounters” with one who they call the most “polarizing” Hollywood actress of her generation. You would see that despisement for the young actress goes way back.

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The most interesting article I found was on The Daily Beast and made me learn a new word today: Hathahaters.

Pretentious acceptance speech

These “Hathahaters” have not only boomed in numbers recently after her “contrived” and “pretentious (in Pinoy terms “plastic”) acceptance speech when she won the Best Supporting Actress plum in the recent Golden Globes for portraying the tragic character Fantine in the critically acclaimed film version of “Les Miserables,” it may have swollen globally to these wonderful islands in the Asia Pacific after her encounter with Lo.

Quoting The Daily Beast on that Globes acceptance speech: “It was a speech carefully crafted to come off as surprised and humbled, but was instead so carefully rehearsed that it was branded contrived and a tad pretentious. She feigned false surprise: ‘Woo. This is happening,’ she panted. The phrase ‘Thank you very much for this lovely blunt object that I will forevermore use as a weapon against self doubt’ was used.”

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Twitter reaction was spontaneous. The Daily Beast said that there were 19,685 tweets made about her speech per minute. Unfortunately, it wasn’t at all supportive. One went: “Can’t watch the Golden Globes anymore b/c Anne Hathaway called her award a ‘weapon of self doubt’ and I threw my pizza at the TV and shattered it,” says @JuliaMat.

‘Hathahaters’ galore

And that was not all. The Beast had revealed that if you do an Internet search for “Anne Hathaway” and “annoying,” it will return “1.5 million results.” And, if you type in “Anne Hathaway” and “hate,” the results will explode to “28.5 million.” After checking it out myself, the claim was accurate.

Hathaway, the article said, also adored the limelight, too much that it became “so annoying.” This became very apparent in the recent awards haul of “Les Miz” when she would storm the stage and take off valuable minutes of airtime to blurt things like, “I felt like I sprouted a pair of wings and lifted off of the ground” to describe those moments she spent shooting the film.

She even took the Critics Choice Awards to task for misspelling her name on the clip reel that was shown when she accepted the award Best Supporting Actress.

Stars behaving badly

And, in the Globes, after her two-minute “weapon of self-doubt” speech (notice there was no reaction from the audience after she had uttered those words, which seemed calculated to draw applause), she again dashed to the microphone when the film won Best Musical or Comedy. She thanked the people she did not mention in her previous speech and when it was producer Eric Fellner’s turn, he said: “I haven’t forgotten anyone because I haven’t started yet.”

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The ever-growing negative reaction to Hathaway’s actions, The Daily Beast said, is a “publicity nightmare” that could dash her hopes of winning an Oscar.

This assessment, therefore, puts her attitude towards Lo into context. Yes, Lo might have erred in dishing out “inappropriate” questions, but Hathaway could have chosen to remain gracious. (By contrast, check out Lo’s interview with Hathaway’s “Les Miz” co-star Amanda Seyfried.) But, the actress, who may have become too intoxicated with stardom since playing Princess Genovia in 2001, and now as the toast of Hollywood as Fantine, could have behaved just as badly.

(Photo courtesy of Working Title Films/Universal Pictures)