Anne Hathaway walked into her audition for “The Dark Knight Rises” convinced she had already solved the puzzle, and she solved it wrong. The actress told podcast host Josh Horowitz that she assumed Christopher Nolan was casting her as Harley Quinn rather than Catwoman, reasoning that Michelle Pfeiffer’s 1992 performance as Selina Kyle was too iconic to remake. She spent a week building what she called a “demonic” version of the character, showing up to the meeting in jester-style flats and a striped top.
Nolan let her sit with that assumption for roughly two hours before correcting course. Only then did he tell her the role on offer was Catwoman, not the Joker’s accomplice. Hathaway said she pivoted her performance on the spot, reworking her physicality and tone to fit a more seductive, morally slippery character. She has since said the misdirection may have helped her land the part, since Selina Kyle’s defining trait is her ability to shift identities at will.
Hathaway got the role, becoming the first actress to play a live-action Catwoman since Pfeiffer, and her performance in the 2012 film earned praise as a highlight of Nolan’s Batman trilogy. It marked her first of what has become a recurring collaboration with the director. The two have since worked together again, and Hathaway now appears as Penelope in Nolan’s new epic “The Odyssey,” which is drawing early praise following its world premiere and opens in theaters July 17.
The anecdote resurfaced as Hathaway makes the press rounds for that film, and it lands amid renewed interest in Catwoman’s future across the DC universe. Zoë Kravitz played a separate version of the character opposite Robert Pattinson in Matt Reeves’s 2022 “The Batman,” while Margot Robbie originated Harley Quinn on screen in 2016’s “Suicide Squad,” a role Nolan never brought to his own films.
DC Studios co-chief James Gunn has said he intends to introduce Catwoman into the rebooted DC Universe eventually, though no casting or timeline has been confirmed. Nolan, for his part, has said his brother and longtime writing collaborator Jonathan pushed him to include Catwoman in “The Dark Knight Rises” at all, arguing the character was too central to Batman lore to leave out of the trilogy’s finale.
I would’ve loved to see her as Harley Quinn! Nolan would’ve done the character right!