Anne Hathaway was ''nervous'' about playing Catwoman.

The 29-year old actress has she was worried about stepping into Michelle Pfeiffer and Halle Berry's shoes to take on the role of sexy leather-clad villain in Christopher Nolan's forthcoming movie 'The Dark Knight Rises'.

She told Scout London magazine: ''I was a little nervous coming in as the new kid on the block. But I found being the only person in the cast who hadn't worked with Chris before motivated me to work even harder.

''The training was hard but fun. I saw it less as a challenge and more as an opportunity to go to a place I had never been required to go before.

''When I started out with my first role in 'The Princess Diaries', one of the questions people kept asking me was, 'Did you grow up dreaming to be a princess?' And the truth was, no, I wanted to be Catwoman.''

Anne's dream job saw her join a star-studded cast including Christian Bale and Tom Hardy in director Christopher's third dark and gothic take on the iconic Batman comic book.

The brunette star's fears were put to rest by Christopher, however, as the filmmaker recently spoke highly of her performance in the film and declared Catwoman should have her own spin-off project.

He said: ''I certainly think she deserves it, she's incredible. She's an incredible character and we're very excited to see her and hopefully we'll leave people wanting more.''