Anne Hathaway is trying to talk about her new movie, Rachel Getting Married, in which she plays Kym, a recovering drug addict who cuts out of rehab in time for her sister’s wedding.

Hathaway is sitting on the patio of a New York hotel; five or six stories up, her dog, Esmeralda, keeps whimpering from the balcony window. “Hi, baby!” Hathaway calls back. Esmeralda cries louder. “She’s so pretty. Ahh, it’s heartbreaking. She’s looking right at me.” And with that, Hathaway dashes upstairs.

Esmeralda, a 70-pound chocolate Labrador, was a present from Raffaello Follieri, Hathaway’s ex-boyfriend. You remember him, don’t you? Hathaway was splashed across the tabloids in June when he was arrested on charges of money laundering and fraud. Hathaway doesn’t want to talk about Follieri—there have been reports that the FBI, as part of its investigation, has confiscated some of her jewels and diaries. In that sense, Rachel Getting Married comes at a perfect time. It gives Hathaway something new, and very different, to focus on. “I’m curious again,” Hathaway says. “I seek adventure. Every time I see it in my head, it’s in the slanted ‘Indiana Jones’ font, and I get happy thinking about it: this is an adventure, this is an adventure.”

Now, she says she’s willing to accept change. She attributes a lot of that change to Rachel. At least physically, you can see the transformation on screen. Hathaway chopped her hair short and she started smoking, a habit she hasn’t kicked yet but she promises she will in two more days. She lived on a diet of pasta, pretzels and bread. “It had a nice bloating effect on my body,” she says. Hathaway even started dressing like her character. “I’d wind up buying a Hanes men’s T-shirt and some cruddy underwear.”

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