Anne Hathaway is the August cover girl of Harper’s Bazaar, all to promote her role as Emma in One Day, a film that I will not be seeing. Okay, I might see it. But I won’t be happy about it. If you’ve read One Day, you know the story, and you can probably see how Anne is a decent choice for Emma, although the choice of Jim “Pillow Weeper” Sturgess as Dexter is still perplexing. Dexter is supposed to be a pretty boy who falls apart, spectacularly… is Jim pretty enough? Eh. Anyway, the Bazaar piece is an easy read, and Anne is a perfectly pleasant young woman. My affection for her has grown significantly over the past few years, and it’s at an all-time high after her performance as Oscar cohost this year, where Anne worked her ass off and James Franco was like a bump on a log. Anne talks about James briefly, and she’s still being classy about it. You can read the full piece here – and here are some highlights:

Preparing for Catwoman: Anne’s preparation for her role as Catwoman in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, the next Batman installment (currently filming in Pittsburgh), has been more than cosmetic. She has been working out five days a week — rigorous exercise and stunt training followed by an hour and a half of dance. “I’ve always thought that skinny was the goal, but with this job I also have to be strong,” she says.

Brokeback Mountain: “I think people assumed that I was a girl searching for a happily-ever-after, when for me that’s the least interesting part of the story,” she says. “With Brokeback, I got to go beyond that.”

Being timid: Outwardly, she was a beautiful star with the extravagant mouth and energy bubbling up like Old Faithful, but Anne was filled with self-doubt. “I could have traveled the world with a backpack and would have gotten nothing from it,” she says with a rueful laugh. “I was just this lost, timid person.”

On James Franco and cohosting the Oscars: That puts perspective to the Oscars and the impossible task of making the show fresh. While Anne was dancing as fast as she could, her laconic cohost seemed sleepy. “How did I take it?” she says mildly about Franco’s comments on Letterman. “I let James know that a whirling dervish is a more flattering comparison than a Tasmanian devil. I called him, and we e-mailed a bit.” She is sanguine about the whole experience. “In the grand scheme of things, I got to have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I met great people, wore beautiful clothes. And I got to put on a show. I don’t see a downside. Anyone who disliked my personality probably disliked my personality before the Oscars.”

Love & Other Drugs and nudity: “I don’t get hung up on nudity. To me, it was just an extension of who she was. It was real.”

On her new film, One Day: “Every girl feels she’s Emma Morley,” she says. “There’s so much growth that happens in your 20s. To me, the character felt very authentic to that experience.”

Anne’s a vegetarian: Anne’s looking ridiculously cheerful, we go off to have lunch at a vegan spot. She orders a plate of basil soy protein with an unfathomable eagerness. A vegetarian, she started eating meat while dating Follieri because, as she once said, it was “easier for the lifestyle at that time.”

Being a people-pleaser: “There’s something very addictive about people pleasing,” she says. “It’s a thought pattern and a habit that feels really, really good until it becomes desperate. It’s one of the reasons that relationship ended. I wasn’t able to grow or foster anything. I think a lot of girls have that story. It’s a big moment when you step away from that and say, ‘I’m going to be exactly who I am. And I’m going to be brave enough to only be with someone who wants me the way I am.'”

Her current relationship with actor Adam Shulman: “So far, it’s worked out great,” she says matter-of-factly, observing that she used to get caught up in the intensity of a romance. “Which has its wonderful side, of course,” she adds with a half shrug, “but also it was exhausting, and sometimes it would freak me out. Mellow doesn’t always make for a good story, but it makes for a good life.”

Anne the student: Her calm is matched by her eagerness to learn. When I casually ask what she is reading, she tells me The Edge of Physics. “It’s about this one man’s explorations around the world to visit all the experiments being done to further cosmology,” she explains. “It’s fascinating! All about neutrinos and dark matter.” Anne, who was attending Vassar when The Princess Diaries was released in 2001, says that if she ever returned to college, “I would probably focus on philosophy, theology, and physics.”

On fashion: Talking about fashion, Anne says she “feels like the luckiest girl in the world when I get to wear all these glamorous clothes,” but away from the red carpet, she is decidedly more moderate, insisting on wearing pieces that she owns, especially favorites like Isabel Marant and Vivienne Westwood. “I’ve become a lot more specific about what I love and why I’m doing it,” she says.

[From Harper’s Bazaar]

I do believe that Anne is probably a dorky people-pleaser good-girl in real life. I used to not buy that from her – I thought she was probably more of a high-maintenance princess, especially when she was with that con artist. But Anne has grown up a lot, and I think this current incarnation suits her. I mean, she’s one of the most in-demand young actresses out there, and she’s definitely on the right track to win an Oscar someday soon. So, this is definitely working.

Photos courtesy of Harper’s Bazaar’s slideshow.