After more than 25 years on stage Les Miserables is finally being made into a major motion picture, directed by Academy Award winning director Tom Hooper. The upcoming adaptation from Universal Pictures featuring the star studded cast of Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Hugh Jackman, and Amanda Seyfried, will be released December 25, 2012.
The adaptation of this beloved Broadway musical based on Victor Hugo’s classic novel set in 19th-century France will tell the story of “broken dreams and unrequited love, passion, sacrifice, and redemption – a timeless testament to the survival of the human spirit”. Hunted for decades by heartless policeman Javert after he breaks parole ex-prisoner Jean Valjean agrees to care for factory worker Fantine’s young daughter, Cosette, forcing their lives to change forever.
For her role in the upcoming film, Hathaway, who stars as Fantine, a factory worker who later turns into a prostitute selling her hair to feed her daughter, decided to cut her own hair for the scene. “I wasn’t expecting it to be such a big deal because it was my idea. You know, it was something I wanted to do for a long time and I knew it’s something the character did,” Hathaway said during her July 12 interview on “Live! with Kelly”. “So I just offered it to the director [Tom Hooper] and he said, ‘Yes.’”
Being her idea to cut off her own hair for the scene did not make filming the scene and parting with her locks any easier. “And then as it got closer, I just thought, ‘Oh I can’t really take it back now,’” she added. “I’ve now done backflips out of windows, I’ve jumped off of buildings and cutting my hair reduced me to like mental patient crying.”
With Broadway’s Les Miserables being seen by more than 60 million people in 42 countries and in 21 languages around the world the major motion-picture adaptation is definitely one of this season’s upcoming must-see films.
Watch the trailer here!
