Anne Hathaway’s Hilarious ‘Dark Knight Rises’ Audition Story Is Going Viral Again, And the Timing Is Perfect

With Anne Hathaway currently deep in the press cycle for ‘The Odyssey,’ the internet has been reminded of one of the best audition stories in modern Hollywood, and it is spreading all over again. As shared by entertainment journalist Joshua Horowitz, Hathaway revealed years ago that she walked into her audition for ‘The Dark Knight Rises‘ fully convinced she was reading for Harley Quinn, not Catwoman, and spent the first hour of her meeting with Christopher Nolan performing accordingly.

“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.’”

Hathaway described showing up in a Vivienne Westwood top with stripes going everywhere and wearing what she called flat Joker-ey looking shoes, while actively trying to give Nolan “crazy little smiles” that she believed would convey Harley Quinn’s unhinged energy.

About an hour into the meeting, Nolan gently informed her that the role was, in fact, Catwoman. Her internal pivot was immediate. As she 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.”

The story is as funny on a rewatch as it was the first time, but it carries additional weight now given the context. Hathaway is in the middle of her third Nolan collaboration, playing Penelope in ‘The Odyssey,’ and the anecdote is a reminder of how a working relationship that began with that slightly chaotic audition room miscommunication has grown into one of the more consistent actor-director pairings in prestige blockbuster cinema. She also starred in ‘Interstellar’ in 2014.

The original anecdote has been circulating for years, but it has found renewed reach at the perfect moment. ‘The Odyssey,’ which opens July 17, is receiving significant press attention, and anything tied to Hathaway and Nolan is currently getting amplified by the surrounding excitement.

‘The Dark Knight Rises’ remains the most financially successful Batman film ever made, having grossed over $1 billion at the worldwide box office and earning an 87% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Hathaway’s Catwoman was widely praised as one of the film’s most entertaining elements, with Vanity Fair calling her the best Catwoman on screen. The fact that the performance came after a full hour of unintentional Harley Quinn cosplay makes it somehow even more impressive.

In ‘The Odyssey,’ Hathaway plays Penelope, queen of Ithaca, whose storyline runs in parallel with her husband Odysseus’s journey home. Director Nolan, speaking to Time magazine, cited Hathaway’s commitment and presence as central to the film’s ensemble dynamic. According to Collider, she and Tom Holland also helped Nolan work through never-before-seen IMAX camera challenges involving a blimp-and-mirror rig built specifically to capture intimate dialogue scenes at IMAX scale.

The Harley Quinn anecdote is one of those Hollywood stories that never gets old precisely because it reveals something true about how this business actually works, with preparation, instinct, and a willingness to pivot in real time all mattering more than arriving perfectly calibrated for the role. Hathaway arrived calibrated for the wrong character entirely and still became the definitive Catwoman of her era.

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