Anne Hathaway

Anne Jacqueline "Annie" Hathaway was born on November 12, 1982, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Her father, Gerald, was a labor attorney, and her mother, Kate (née McCauley), is a former actress. Hathaway's maternal grandfather was WIP (AM) Philadelphia radio personality Joe McCauley. According to The Daily Telegraph, she was named after Shakespeare's wife. She has an older brother, Michael, and a younger brother, Thomas. When Hathaway was six, the family moved to Millburn, New Jersey, where she was raised.

At age eight, when Hathaway watched her mother perform in the first national tour of Les Misérables as Fantine, she instantly became fascinated with the stage, but her parents were not keen on allowing her to pursue an acting career. After this, Kate quit acting to raise Hathaway and her brothers. Hathaway was raised as Roman Catholic with what she considers to be "really strong values" and wished to be a nun during her childhood, but acting was always a high priority for her. Her relationship with the Catholic Church changed at age fifteen, after learning that her older brother was gay. Her family left the church, joining the Episcopal Church because of its acceptance of homosexuality, but they eventually left that too. In 2009, Hathaway described her religious beliefs as "a work in progress".

Hathaway attended Brooklyn Heights Montessori School and Wyoming Elementary School in Millburn. She graduated from Millburn High School, where she played soccer and took part in many plays, including Once Upon a Mattress, in which she portrayed Winnifred. Later, she appeared in the plays Jane Eyre and Gigi, at New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse. She studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1993 and became the first teenager admitted into the Barrow Group Theater Company's acting program. She spent several semesters studying as an English major and political science minor at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, before transferring to New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study.

Between 1998 and 1999, Hathaway sang soprano with the All-Eastern U.S. High School Honors Chorus at Carnegie Hall and in plays at Seton Hall Preparatory School in West Orange, New Jersey. Early in her film career, her acting style and appearance would be likened to Judy Garland—whom she cites as one of her favorite actresses—and Audrey Hepburn. Three days after her performance at Carnegie Hall, Hathaway was cast in the short-lived Fox television series Get Real. She played the teenager Meghan Green, alongside Jon Tenney, Debrah Farentino and Jesse Eisenberg. Despite her early success, Hathaway suffered from depression and anxiety as a teenager. However, she said in 2008 that she had since grown from it. She missed her first college semester for the filming of her cinematic debut, The Princess Diaries (2001). According to Hathaway, she never regretted not completing her degree, as she enjoyed being with others who "were trying to grow up".