It’s a happy birthday to Anne Hathaway, who turns 26 today, and probably doesn’t celebrate by calling imprisoned  ex-beau Raffaello Follieri. After two hit Disney flicks opposite Julie Andrews, plus turns in Ella Enchanted and Nicholas Nickleby, Hathaway began an earnest, concerted effort to shed her princess-y image with the 2005 one-two topless punch of Brokeback Mountain, for which she beat out Sienna Miller and dozens of other actresses, and Barbara Kopple’s Havoc (below). For many actresses, of course, that means playing hookers, stripper drug fiends, black widow femme fatales, or some combination thereof.



In savvy fashion, though, Hathaway has run an end-around on topless convention. Brokeback Mountain, of course, was a supporting role in an Oscar-bait project, but the fact that it was a movie about, you know, gay cowboys guaranteed that it would be remembered — or at least publicly discussed — chiefly for other reasons. While Havoc rather inexplicably went straight-to-video — something Hathaway couldn’t have counted on, nor wished — it was a gritty, class-clash suburban-teens-gone-wild picture, kind of like a more hardcore crazy/beautiful, spiced with barrio authenticity. Another legit film, in other words.

So basically Hathaway gets total cred with the drooling Maxim crowd, because the movies are Internet-searchable, yet she takes no hit with female audiences for tackling a sex bomb role, which often results in dramatically diminished same-sex appeal, as Angelina Jolie (among others) will attest. Now, in this fall’s Rachel Getting Married, Hathaway plays the (recovering) drug fiend… without getting naked, thank you very much.