We know her as, “Anne,” but actress Anne Hathaway actually can’t stand being called Anne. She much prefers “Annie” and says that’s what everyone calls her.

So how did she end up with the stage name ”Anne”? It all began in her teens after she did her first commercial. She had to get her SAG card, a card to help establish her status as a performer, and they asked her what she’d like her name to be.

“And I was like, ‘Well, it should be my name, my name is Anne Hathaway,’” Hathaway explained on a recent episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “And that seemed like the right choice, but it never occurred to me that, for the rest of my life, people would call me Anne.”

She really regrets that decision. Like, really regrets it. Hathaway. says that every time someone calls her “Anne” instead of “Annie” she feels like she’s being punished. A big reason for that is because “Anne” is what her own mother refers to her as if she’s mad at her.

“The only person who ever calls me Anne is my mother, and she only does it when she’s really mad at me—like really mad,” Hathaway says. “And so every time I step out in public and someone calls my name, I think they’re going to yell at me.”

Oof, bad memories, we imagine!

Jimmy gets it though, explaining that his own mother would refer to him as his full first and middle name when she was mad—“James Thomas!”

But Hathaway had a good point: “I doubt people are just like, ‘James Thomas, how are you? Loved your last film,’” she says to Jimmy, who now can completely understand where she’s coming from. “People are like, ‘Anne!,’ and I’m like, ‘”What? What did I do?’”

Hathaway says that most people know not to refer to her as Anne, so they call her Miss H., or even just “Hath.” But “Annie” is truly what she prefers—really just anything but Anne!

That’s going to take a bit of getting used to her for her fans. You can hear her discuss her name—as well as hear her discuss how she’s been spending time with her kids during quarantine and starring opposite Chiwetel Ejiofor in her new HBO film Locked Down in the video below.

Have people ever called you a name that you despise? How did you go about having people call you something different?