Cincinnati Bell Commercial: Anne Hathaway Shilling Landlines Before She Was Famous

February 27, 2013 by Hollywoodite

Anne Hathaway just won an Oscar for her supporting role in Les Miserables. Although, it’s debatable whether she should have won for a brief, and subjectively mediocre, performance and a press tour during which she stopped just short of declaring herself a winner.

Admitting she’s become insufferable, Hathaway recently said: “[The backlash] does get to me. But you have to remember in life that there’s a positive to every negative and a negative to every positive. The miracle of the universe is that, as far as they know, there’s 51 percent matter versus 49 percent anti-matter… things tip in the scale of the positive. So that is what I focus on.” A statement that makes her no more likable. Add to that, a source tells Us Weekly that Hathaway rehearsed her Oscars speech for weeks hoping the affect would ameliorate the negative press. ”She was very aware that she had been the butt of everyone’s jokes,” the source says.

Before she talked herself into an Oscar that probably should have gone to someone else, Hathaway was like any other fresh-faced ingenue trying to make it by taking any acting work going.

In this Cincinnati Bell Telephone commercial from the mid-to-late 90s, Hathaway is selling the idea of separate lines because cell phones and iPads weren’t a thing yet. According to local reports, Hathaway was flown in from Los Angeles by Northlich, a Cincinnati marketing agency, to avoid using someone who’d already been in multiple commercials.