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’.
During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in 2021, the actor said the name most people use for her doesn’t actually feel natural — and that it can instantly put her on edge.
“Call me Annie, everybody, everybody, call me Annie, please,” she told Fallon.
She went on to explain that the decision to use “Anne Hathaway” professionally was made years ago, when she was still a teenager sorting out the early steps of her career.
“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’.
“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.”
For Hathaway, the issue isn’t just preference — it’s the association she has with the name “Anne” in her personal life.
“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.”
Hathaway isn’t the only major star to have a complicated relationship with the name the public knows them by. Emma Stone, for example, started working under a different first name early on for professional reasons.
Although she’s widely known as “Emma,” Stone’s birth name is Emily Jean Stone. She changed it after learning another performer had already registered “Emily Stone” with the Screen Actors Guild.
“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.”
Stone has also shared that her stage name had a pop-culture connection, revealing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that it was influenced by 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.”