Actress revels in 'dark and troubled' role

Hollywood star Anne Hathaway today told how she played her most complex character ever in her film 'Rachel Getting Married'.

Hathaway, who shot to fame in 'The Devil Wears Prada' and played the title role in Jane Austen biopic 'Becoming Jane', takes on the dark and troubled role of Kym for her new family drama movie.

Hathaway told how she enjoyed playing a character at the centre of the drama for a change.

'Rachel Getting Married' sees Kym, who is tortured by a terrible incident in her past, return to the Buchman family home for the wedding of her sister Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt).

The film is competing at the Venice Film Festival for a prestigious Golden Lion Award.

Speaking in Venice, Hathaway said she had enjoyed playing her various roles, but “Kym was definitely by far the most complex”.

Glamorously dressed in a strapless plum-coloured frock, Hathaway described playing the part as a “perfect experience” adding: “I really do mean it this time.”

She said: “I have been asked a lot about what it was like to play a tortured character, a character so covered with darkness.”

But Hathaway insisted she never saw Kym in this way and instead viewed her as a girl trying to live an honest life, sometimes “impolitely honest”.

She continued: “It was so much fun to be the combustible element in the scene.

“I’ve never played a character like this before... it was fun to be at the centre of the turmoil.”

Hathaway said that while she was more passive than Kym, she admired the character and her struggle.

Director Jonathan Demme, whose credits include 'The Silence of the Lambs', received rousing cheers from the awaiting media as he entered the press conference.

The film sees Rachel marry Sidney, a black record producer played by Tunde Adebimpe – and Demme was asked if the picture of a multi-ethnic society really reflected the US today.

Demme, who highlighted US President hopeful Barack Obama in reply to the question, said: “This kind of group of people that are present at the wedding, that’s the America that I feel very deeply connected to.

“So to me this group is normal.

“Somebody saw a picture from the movie (and) they said: ’The film’s about an inter-racial marriage’.”

“I said: ’No it isn’t.’ That’s the demographics of the couple getting married.

“Tunde was the second actor that I offered the part to.

“The first person was Paul Thomas Anderson...

“It still would have been a diverse group of people.”

Screenplay writer Jenny Lumet was asked if the climate in the US had influenced the film.

She said: “If this family is striving to come together maybe this is what we’re doing with this new election.

“That’s maybe what we’re hoping for...

“This family fights to come together and I genuinely feel that’s what we’re doing now.”

Demme also said he was influenced by his experiences as a documentary maker while working on the film, saying he tried to give it a “home movie” feel.

He said he had been asked how his fiction work influenced his documentaries.

Demme said he would reply: “When we’re doing a fiction film, we’re trying to make it seem real.

“When we’re doing a documentary we’re trying to trying to make it feel dramatic.

“This time, with this film, my documentary work came into play in a big way...

“Even the actors, because we have great faith in all of them, they won’t know what the shot is because we won’t know what the shot is.”