Anne Hathaway

When I meet people for the first time, I'm friendly but shy. I'm much less outwardly nervous than I used to be, but I still get anxious sometimes.

I've worked with people and I've known people that were really competitive, but I've always said that I take an Elizabeth Bennett philosophy of life - I laugh. I love my job, but if it means hurting someone, I won't do it.

I'm much happier talking with people than I am flirting with them.

I love fashion; I love being able to have fun with it, but I think I need to get a little bit more organised before I ever become a true fashionista.

I try not to date where I work. It makes life easier. I don't say no to anybody because I'd hope that people wouldn't say no to me just because I'm an actor - but they'd have to be pretty extraordinary.

I was raised in a solidly upper-middle class family who had really strong values and excess was not one of the things that my family put up with. And there's something wildy decadent about the young-star lifestyle, and I just don't really see the point.

I was thrust into a really lofty, enviable, but isolated position with 'Princess Diaries' in that I could carry a film before I really knew if I could act.

So as long as I'm a working actor, I can improve. I want to work with people that frighten me and excite me, and characters that I don't believe I'm the best person for the part but I'm still gonna try anyway. Those are my favorite roles.

What I've observed and what I've imagined - and definitely what I'm hoping - happens as you get older is that there's a mellowing, an acceptance that comes with time. I guess that I'll find out.

It takes a minute for me to let my guard down, but once I do and I get to know someone, I'm very open, very trusting. Some might say too trusting, because considering the amount of money that can be made from selling gossip, I could be very easily taken advantage of.

It's definitely a thing to be sitting there, getting a pedicure, and you look over and someone is reading an article about an aspect of your life that you know is not true. It's weird, it's uncomfortable, but I don't see it changing anytime soon, so I should figure a way to laugh through it.

I'm pretty good at remaining calm during an emergency. My house burned down when I was 12, which made me really pragmatic about what needed to be done. But I can be bad in that I compartmentalize a lot of emotions and push them away to deal with them at a later date.

I kind of got my big break with 'The Princess Diaries' and during the press rounds for that everyone asked me: 'Did you always want to be a princess growing up?' And the truth was, no I wanted to be Catwoman.

I try to stay out of the spotlight as much as humanly possible, because I think that when actors, whether or not they've chosen it or it has been thrust upon them, are living very public lives, it affects your ability to get lost in their performances.

You can alter movie singing so much because you go into the recording studio and, just technology for recording has gotten so good, you can hold out a note and they can combine a note from take 2 and a note from take 8.

I have no aspirations of world domination through the pop charts. None at all.

I love the short-haired lifestyle.

When I was younger, I felt very much like, 'Oh, I have to be a certain way, I have to look a certain way.' You really, really don't. That's the way women are treated differently than men. I mean, I've had actors argue with me about this.

Michelle Pfeiffer in Tim Burton's 'Batman' was one of the most inspiring - I saw that and I was like, 'I want to be her, I want to do that.'

I think that Jersey Shore is awesome. I've gone to Cape May every summer of my life.