Anne Hathaway Takes On Daunting New Role

Just two years ago Anne Hathaway was best known for playing teen royalty in "The Princess Diary" films.

The back-to-back critical and commercial successes of "Brokeback Mountain" and "The Devil Wears Prada" showed she's put the crown behind her. Now she's back in theaters playing a young Jane Austen in the new film "Becoming Jane."

Hathaway says she has never worked so hard on a film, and she's seen just 10 minutes of the final product — she's limiting her viewing as a self-protection measure.

"I know that I couldn't help but be disappointed by what I see, even if it's wonderful," she told The Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm. "I prefer to let it remain in my memory the way it was when we shot it."

Taking on the role of one of Britain's most iconic writers put a lot of pressure on Hathaway. She said it's understandable that some people might think that as an American from "The Princess Diaries," she is ill-suited for the part.

"I like to try to surprise people," she said. "So I was — it seemed like a good opportunity to do that."

"Becoming Jane," isn't a strict biography, it's more of an interpretation of what Austen's life would have been like. Austen, the author of romantic books like "Pride and Prejudice" and "Sense and Sensibility," never married, although she was proposed to three times. She accepted one for only a night, but the next morning rescinded, Hathaway said.

Austen's desire to remain unmarried was unusual for her time. Her mother put a lot of pressure on the writer to get married in order to make sure she would be taken care of. But Austen maintained that she would not marry without love.

The film is based on the idea that Austen might have found love with an Irish lawyer, Tom Lefroy, she mentioned in some of her letters. Some speculate that Lefroy was the inspiration behind the legendary "Pride and Prejudice" character Mr. Darcy. But Hathaway was careful to stress that it is an imagined version of Austen's life.

"Jane Austen supposedly wrote between 4,000 and 5,000 letters in her lifetime and we have 163," Hathaway said. "Tom is mentioned in two of them. We don't have enough information to draw conclusive — to draw a conclusive story, to be fair. So what our film does is we take the evidence that we do have and we sort of imagine what would have happened if there had been a relationship between the two of them, if there had been sparks and an understanding and true love."

Hathaway wanted people to understand that "Becoming Jane" is not about the man Austen might have loved, but rather what her potential inspirations could have been.

"She didn't need Tom to inspire her writing but simply that — simply that it goes along the lines of the argument made in the film, what form is an artist, experience or imagination?" she said.

Up next for Hathaway is "Get Smart" costarring Steve Carell. She plays Agent 99 and says working with him was "heaven," but it was hard for her to keep a straight face on the set.

"I went to him in the beginning and said, listen, we're going to be improving a lot, you have so much more experience than I do, so any advice you want to give me I'd really appreciate," Hathaway said. "And he said, actually the thing that was great about my audition is because I wasn't nervous. I said I didn't think I was going to get the part, I was relaxed. Now all of a sudden there's pressure! It was such a wonderful experience. We had so much fun."