When it comes to preparing for a role, Anne Hathaway takes her cues from some unusual places.

As she prepped for her turn as Catwoman in next year’s The Dark Knight Rises, the actress turned to screen legend Hedy Lamarr for inspiration.

NYMag’s Vulture has the story:

“When Anne Hathaway got the part of Catwoman in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, she famously watched cat videos on YouTube in order to get into character, but there’s one other key ingredient that informed her performance: the actress Hedy Lamarr, whom Batman creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger based the character on. “I know this sounds odd, but her breathing is extraordinary,” Hathaway told the Los Angeles Times. “She takes these long, deep, languid breaths and exhales slowly. There’s a shot of her in [the 1933 film] Ecstasy exhaling a cigarette and I took probably five breaths during her one exhale. So I started working on my breathing a lot.”

Read the full story here.