The Princess Diaries

Disney's The Princess Diaries arrived on August 3, 2001 (having premiered July 29 at the El Capitan Theatre), directed by Garry Marshall and based on Meg Cabot's 2000 novel. The film was produced by Whitney Houston's BrownHouse Productions, and it became a defining moment for its young star. Anne Hathaway, in her first major film role, plays Mia Thermopolis, an awkward, ordinary teenager living in San Francisco who discovers that her estranged grandmother is the Queen of a small European nation called Genovia—and Mia is the heir to the throne. Queen Clarisse Renaldi, played by Julie Andrews, takes on the task of royal training. It was a homecoming role for Andrews: her first Disney film since Mary Poppins in 1964.

The production was made on a $26 million budget and earned $165.3 million worldwide, opening to over $23.2 million in its first weekend—a strong third-place finish behind Rush Hour 2 and Planet of the Apes. The film's central sequence—the famous makeover scene, frizzy-haired Mia transformed into a princess—became one of those movie moments burned into the memory of everyone who spent their sleepover years in the early 2000s, rewound and rewatched until the tape wore thin. A sequel, The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, arrived in 2004, but it was the original that captured the fantasy and stuck with audiences.