Anne Hathaway Rachel Getting Married Bath Scene (2008)

The nudity in Rachel Getting Married isn’t sexy, and Jonathan Demme would probably throw a drink at anyone who said it was. It’s one of the tenderest scenes of her career, and it’s here because it’s real.

Rachel Getting Married (2008): the morning after the crash, Rachel washes Kym’s hair and back in the tub and finds the rose tattoo (28s)

What happens in the bath

Hathaway plays Kym, out of rehab for a weekend to attend her sister Rachel’s wedding in Connecticut, armed with a short bleached crop, a sharp tongue and a guilt the size of the family house. Demme shot it like a home movie, handheld and loose, and it earned Hathaway her first Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

By the wedding morning, Kym has crashed a car and her face is bruised. Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt) runs her a bath and washes her like a little sister again: the shower head over her shoulders, the towel, and a rose tattoo Rachel never knew about, with their late brother’s name beneath it. Hathaway is topless in the tub the whole time. Nobody watching is thinking about that.

If you want heat, go to the red-sheet scenes in Love & Other Drugs two years later. If you want to see what she can do with her face while barely moving it, stay right here. It’s the gentlest stop on every film where Anne Hathaway went nude.

Kym’s rose tattoo in the bath scene, Rachel Getting Married (2008)

Anne Hathaway as Kym in the bathtub, Rachel Getting Married

Film: Rachel Getting Married (2008) · Sony Pictures Classics · released October 3, 2008 · directed by Jonathan Demme · Anne Hathaway as Kym, Rosemarie DeWitt as Rachel