The princess is now a queen

MANILA, Philippines - Fresh from an acclaimed comic turn in Valentine’s Day, Anne Hathaway stars as the White Queen in Tim Burton’s epic 3D fantasy adventure Alice in Wonderland.

Mirana, the White Queen, is the younger sister of the Red Queen (Helena Bonham-Carter), and while she appears to be all sweetness and light, beneath the surface there’s a hint of darkness to her character. “She comes from the same gene pool as the Red Queen,” says Hathaway. “She really likes the dark side, but she’s so scared of going too far into it that she’s made everything appear very light and happy. But she’s living in that place out of fear that she won’t be able to control herself.”

When Alice returns to Underland, the White Queen takes her under her wing, offering her protection, although her motives aren’t completely altruistic.

Is this an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s books?

This is Alice in Wonderland 10 years later. The story isn’t the same. And in re-reading the book in preparation for the film, I noticed that a lot of it is Alice trying to figure out who she isn’t by process of elimination. She knows that she isn’t all the things that people are saying that she is, and so, by going through all of them, she gets a better idea of what she is. And in the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland, Alice is trying to name who she is without using the process of elimination in a similar way. There’s a great line in it, where someone says, “You seem like Alice, but you’ve lost your muchness.” That’s my favorite line. So I think if the book is about Alice exploring her imagination, this one is about Alice finding her soul.

Why are Carroll’s characters great for a Tim Burton movie?

One of the reasons why Alice in Wonderland and Tim are such a great match is because nothing is exactly as it seems in Wonderland. Nothing is entirely good or entirely bad. There’s a mixture of life and texture and intention, and I think that’s something with which Tim is really comfortable. And if you look throughout his filmography, nothing is ever what it appears to be or should be. So, I think in that sense, living in the questions, the ambiguity, but also the specificity of the world — these are things in which Tim excels as filmmaker. I believe the filmmaker and the subject matter complement each other really beautifully in this film.

Describe the character you play.

I play the White Queen. When I was trying to work her out, I kept saying to myself, “She is a punk-rock, vegan pacifist.” So I listened to a lot of Blondie, I watched a lot of Greta Garbo movies, and I looked at a lot of the artwork of Dan Flavin. Then a little bit of Norma Desmond got thrown in there, too. And she just kind of emerged. And I really like her. When I first came onboard the project, Tim talked a lot about the relationship between the sisters, and that really opened the character up to me a lot.

Opening soon in theaters, Alice in Wonderland is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International.