Anne Hathaway asks fans to stop calling her 'Anne' and explained why she doesn't like it
Topics: Celebrity, Anne Hathaway, Film and TV
Lucy Devine
Featured Image Credit: John Nacion/Variety via Getty Images
Topics: Celebrity, Anne Hathaway, Film and TV
Anne Hathaway has explained why she doesn't like people calling her by her name, and has even asked fans to call her anything but 'Anne'.
Speaking on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon back in 2021, Hathaway explained that the only person who calls her Anne is her mom, explaining that most people call her by a different name.
"Call me Annie, everybody, everybody, call me Annie, please," she told Fallon.
“When I was 14 years old, I did a commercial, and I had to get my SAG [Screen Actors Guild] card and they asked me, 'What do you want your name to be?' And I was like, 'Well, it should be my name. My name's Anne Hathaway’.
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"So that seemed like the right choice, but it never occurred to me that for the rest of my life, people will call me Anne."
Hathaway explained that when people do call her Anne, she immediately assumes she's in trouble.
“The only person who calls me Anne is my mother and she only does it when she's really mad at me, like really mad. So, every time I step out in public and someone calls my name, I think they're going to yell at me," she continued.
"People are like, "Anne!" And I'm like, 'What? What did I do?'
"It doesn't fit. I'm an Annie."
One star who did decide to change their name slightly at a young age was Emma Stone.
To the world, she's known as Emma, but her birth name is actually Emily Jean Stone.
At the beginning of her acting career, Emma changed her name when she discovered there was already an actress with the name 'Emily Stone'.
“I’m fine either way. I really am. My real name is Emily, though,” she told the Today show.
“[Emily Stone] was taken at Screen Actors Guild. It’s sort of like when you register a business and you can’t have the same name as someone else. I’ve been saying Emily my whole life. You can call me whatever you want. You can make up a name."
She also revealed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that the name 'Emma' was inspired by the British girl band the Spice Girls.
“Growing up, I was super blonde, and my real name is Emily, but I wanted to be called Emma because of Baby Spice. And guess what, now I am,” she said.
“It wasn’t necessarily because of her. But yes, in second grade, did I go up to the teacher on the first day and ask her to call me Emma? Yes, I did. And was it because of Emma Lee Bunton from the Spice Girls? Yes, it was.”