Anne Hathaway didn't understand her own costumes until the day she wore orchid.
On the set of Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey," her first fitting put Penelope in a soft, dusty pink gown. After the camera test, the palette flipped to jewel tones. Hathaway went along with it without knowing why, until a flashback feast scene, when she asked costume designer Ellen Mirojnik what color she was wearing.
"I just remember turning to Matt and grabbing his hand and being like, 'Oh my gosh, Matt, she wears color,'" Hathaway said during a global press conference for Universal Pictures. "Because she's not in mourning because he's not dead. And she gets dressed up and does her hair every single day because today could be the day that he's coming home."
That is the key to the performance Universal is now pushing for the Academy Awards. The studio is campaigning Hathaway in supporting actress for Penelope, the queen of Ithaca who waits 20 years for Odysseus, played by Matt Damon. Co-star Samantha Morton, who plays Circe, is in the same category. Hathaway won that Oscar for "Les Misérables."
A queen with no apology in her
Penelope has been the symbol of patience and fidelity for about 3,000 years. Hathaway said she didn't set out to correct that image. She read those virtues as armor.
"Her mask is a really important part of her armor," she said. "That patience, that fidelity, while I'm sure being authentic, it's also a weapon that she has."
She called Penelope Odysseus' equal in strategy and cunning, a woman running a kingdom while the king is gone and protecting a son, Telemachus, who is always in danger. What was new for her, she said, was playing a woman who doesn't smooth the road for anyone. When the suitor Antinous walks into her chamber, Penelope doesn't charm him. She dismisses him.
"Normally when I play characters like that, they're the bad guy, but she's not," Hathaway said. "She's just sitting in her power such as it is."
She said she feels she is entering a new chapter. She has also now made films with Nolan in three decades of her life: "The Dark Knight Rises" in her 20s, "Interstellar" in her 30s and "The Odyssey" in her 40s.
Ride or die in ancient Greece
Penelope and Odysseus share little screen time. Hathaway said she and Damon built the marriage on one idea: in an era of political marriages, these two actually loved each other and knew how rare that was. That, she said, is what makes the separation a tragedy.
Her modern shorthand for the couple: two people who love motorcycles. "Penelope can 100% handle her own bike, but she loves riding with Odysseus," she said.
To find the ancient world, Hathaway read a biblical scholar's book on the Letter to the Hebrews and how it moved from ancient Greek into the Judeo-Christian ethic she grew up with. She took Greek words from it into scenes. Standing behind a screen looking out at the suitors, she said, she would think one word: kakia, which means evil.
Beginners on an IMAX camera
"The Odyssey" was shot on IMAX film cameras, and Hathaway said that left everyone, Nolan included, starting over on intimate scenes.
"Chris had never shot an intimate scene on IMAX before. Matt had never done it," she said. "We were all having a beginner experience."
Her answer was restraint. She held back in certain scenes because she didn't know what the frame held, and doing too much on those lenses, she said, "could be fatal." The exception is the reunion. When Penelope finally looks at Odysseus after his battle with the suitors, Hathaway said she wanted every ounce of emotion on screen: Is this real? Is she dreaming? Did she die? Is it a trick?
She teared up describing it. "I erupted," she said.
'In the hole'
The most revealing story in the hour was about what happened before that scene. After a long run of emotional work, Hathaway said, she went into what actors call "the hole," when the nervous system flips, emotions shut off and breathing gets hard.
She told Nolan and Damon she needed a minute. Nolan, she said, sat with her as a friend and got her laughing until she could breathe again and finish the scene.
"He can direct fleets of ships. We've all seen it. He can move mountains. He can bend our brains," she said. "But that was the thing that felt so beautiful at this time was that he was just a person sitting next to a person."
Stage 23 and a lost Hollywood
The Ithaca palace, designed by Ruth De Jong, was built on Stage 23 at Sony in Los Angeles, where the company shot for about a month. Hathaway said the cast rarely left the set even when they could. She called it a kind of filmmaking that has become rare in America, especially in LA, where she made her first movie.
She placed the shoot beside "Rachel Getting Married," the Jonathan Demme film she made at 24 and has long called the artistic high point of her career. "Now I have two that reach those heights," she said.
She gave the last word to Damon, who she said never had a bad day across months of armor, water and mountain stunts. "He was the greatest number one on a call sheet I have ever experienced," she said. "I don't think I'm the same person after working with him."
"The Odyssey" returns to IMAX 70mm theaters Dec. 11.
