Anne Hathaway remembers being charmed by “The Witches” years before she conjured up her own delightfully wicked performance in the latest movie adaptation of the Roald Dahl novel.
The Oscar-winning actress was blown away as a child when she watched the original 1990 film starring Anjelica Huston as the menacing Grand High Witch.
“It left a huge impression,” Hathaway, 37, told the Daily News. “I can recall whole scenes however many years later it is. I remember being thrilled by it, and I remember just absolutely loving Anjelica Huston. I just wanted to know how you did that, how you could stand up there and be so powerful.”
In the new version of “The Witches,” Hathaway got the chance to brew her own rendition of the Grand High Witch.
The family film, which is now streaming on HBO Max, introduces a world where witches are real, hate children and want nothing more than to antagonize them. Hathaway’s eccentric Grand High Witch is the leader of them all, and creates a purple potion that turns kids into mice.
Coming up with the perfect voice for the Grand High Witch proved to be an important mission for Hathaway, who tried out Norwegian, Swedish and Danish accents before finding one that did just the trick.
“I wanted to bring something ancient-sounding into her voice,” Hathaway explained. “My dialect coach was the one who observed that all of those accents were based on old Norse. I actually went down an internet rabbit hole and I found this video of a poetry professor performing an ancient Norse poem. The sounds that came out of his mouth were incredible, and they sounded really sinister and mystical.
“Then he translated the poem, and it was like, ‘The cows have come in from the meadow. It’s time to milk them.’ It was the most banal, straightforward thing,” she said. “I was like, I have to give this a try.”
Physically transforming into the character sometimes meant spending upward of five hours in the makeup room ahead of scenes in which Hathaway’s character ditched her human disguise and transformed into a bald-headed witch.
The over-the-top-evil Grand High Witch is the latest leading role for Hathaway, whose career is filled with memorable performances in comedies, dramas, thrillers and more.
“Especially as a young actor, I just thought that’s the only way I’m going to get better, if I play as many different types of roles as I can,” said Hathaway, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2013 for “Les Misérables.”
“But at this point, I’m all about the director,” she said. “If you have an incredible director in the driver’s seat, they won’t let you repeat yourself. They won’t let you fall back on a bag of tricks. They won’t let you do something you’ve done before, and you won’t let yourself. … You want to make it worthy of a great director’s time.”
Hathaway’s initial draw to “The Witches” was the chance to work with director Robert Zemeckis, who she’s long considered one of her favorite filmmakers.
She hopes viewers of “The Witches” are enchanted by the fun moments and deeper messages at the center of the film.
“It doesn’t matter how small you think you are or others think you are, good really can defeat evil,” Hathaway said. “But we’ve got to stand up to it.”
