Anne Hathaway Lives Acting Dream

"The Princess Diaries" star Anne Hathaway is watching her own Cinderella story unfold.

Only 19 years old, beautiful, talented and smart, the previously unknown actress has taken the semester off from Vassar College to enjoy life as a movie star.

"It's going to sound so cheesy, but I just love acting," she said. "I love learning about new parts of myself through characters, and getting lost in people and learning how to breathe differently because all of a sudden you're this different person."

In the meantime, she vows not to let celebrity go to her head. "If you're on the cover of a magazine, that does not influence how organic your acting is."

Still basking in the blockbuster success of "The Princess Diaries," Hathaway became a critical darling in the recent Broadway musical "Carnival," in which she played an orphan who falls under the spell of a nefarious traveling circus. The show ended in mid-February.

Her latest appearance is in the family-oriented drama "The Other Side of Heaven," in which she plays the devoted love of a Mormon missionary, awaiting his return from a two-year excursion in Tonga in the 1950s.

"Everyone thinks this is supposed to be my huge follow-up role but in actuality this is my 'first-ever feature film,'" she says, annunciating those last words in a weighty announcer's voice.

She credits the low-budget 2001 drama, which is now opening in more theaters, with indirectly getting her the lead in "The Princess Diaries." While traveling from her home in New Jersey to New Zealand for the production, she had a daylong layover in Los Angeles and decided to audition for the "Diaries" part. "I was shaking during the entire audition, but apparently nobody noticed," she said.