“Call me Annie, everybody, everybody, call me Annie, please,” she told Fallon, making it clear that “Annie” feels much more natural to her.
“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.”
So while Anne Hathaway became the name printed on movie posters, red carpets, and interviews, it was not really the name she expected people to use in normal life.
She explained that when someone calls her Anne in public, her first reaction is not excitement. Instead, it makes her feel like she is about to be scolded.
“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?'”
That one sentence sums it up well. To fans, “Anne Hathaway” may sound elegant and familiar, but to the actor herself, “Annie” is the name that feels like her.
It is also a reminder that stage names and public names can stick in ways celebrities do not always expect when they first start working in the industry.
Although the world knows her as Emma, her birth name is Emily Jean Stone. She changed it early in her career because another actor had already registered the name “Emily Stone.”
For actors, that kind of change can happen because of Screen Actors Guild rules, which prevent performers from using the exact same professional name as someone already registered.
“[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 said during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that the name “Emma” had a childhood connection to the Spice Girls.
“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.”
So while Hathaway prefers Annie and Stone was born Emily, both stories show how a name can become part of a celebrity’s public image, even when the person behind it feels a little differently.