Anne Hathaway

Anne Hathaway: The Howl, Not the Song

A week before shooting "I Dreamed a Dream," Anne Hathaway told her director she was losing her nerve. Tom Hooper reframed the assignment: "It's not an iconic song. You mustn't think about it like that. It's this woman's howl." Two takes failed. She halted the set, pulled out her earpieces, shut her eyes and issued herself an instruction — "Put aside all that bullshit and just do your job" — and let rip. The third take is the one in the film. It won her an Academy Award and then, improbably, made her one of the most publicly resented women in America for roughly a year.

Millburn

Named for Shakespeare's wife, she grew up the middle of three children of Gerald Hathaway, a labour attorney, and Kate McCauley Hathaway, a former actress; her maternal grandfather had been a Philadelphia radio personality. The family moved from Brooklyn to Millburn, New Jersey when she was six. She sang soprano with the All-Eastern U.S. High School Honors Chorus at Carnegie Hall, and three days later was cast in the Fox series *Get Real*. She was the first teenager admitted to The Barrow Group's acting programme, read English at Vassar with a politics minor, and finished at NYU's Gallatin School.

Leaving the Church

Raised Roman Catholic with what she has called "really strong values," she wanted as a child to become a nun. At fifteen, after learning that her older brother Michael was gay, the family left the Church over its position on homosexuality, spent a short period as Episcopalians, and then left organised religion altogether. By 2009 she described her beliefs as "a work in progress." The episode is the earliest evidence of a pattern: a highly conscientious person willing to detonate her own certainties.

The Princess and the Exit

Garry Marshall cast her in *The Princess Diaries* (2001) partly because his granddaughters thought she had the best princess hair; the film took $165 million and boxed her in immediately. She spent three years in family pictures, including the underperforming *Ella Enchanted*, before deliberately breaking out. *Havoc* (2005) required nudity she defended as part of her chosen art form. Ang Lee cast her in *Brokeback Mountain* (2005) after she lied about being able to ride. Then *The Devil Wears Prada* (2006), for which she was the ninth choice, took over $326 million and produced Roger Ebert's verdict: "a great beauty … who makes a convincing career girl."

Rachel Getting Married

Jonathan Demme's 2008 film gave her Kym, a recovering addict released from rehab into her sister's wedding, and gave critics their first real argument for her. Peter Travers called the performance "raw and riveting"; it brought Oscar, Golden Globe, Critics' Choice and Screen Actors Guild nominations. The following years alternated between that register and commerce: *Get Smart*, on which she split the flesh of her shin to the bone and took fifteen stitches; *Bride Wars*, which *Time* listed among the worst chick flicks of the decade; Tim Burton's *Alice in Wonderland*, where she played the White Queen as "a punk-rock vegan pacifist" modelled on Debbie Harry and the artist Dan Flavin; and a Primetime Emmy in 2010 for voicing a guest role on *The Simpsons*.

Les Misérables and the Backlash

For Fantine she ate fewer than five hundred calories a day, lost twenty-five pounds, researched prostitution and had her hair cut on camera. She won the Academy Award, the Golden Globe, the BAFTA and the SAG; her recording of "I Dreamed a Dream" reached number 69 on the Billboard Hot 100. Asked whether she was pleased with the performance, she answered: "Eh." What followed was stranger than the win. *The Atlantic* documented a wave of commentators calling her annoying and her acceptance speeches awkward — a phenomenon that acquired its own name. She has since explained that public speaking makes her acutely anxious, and said the experience made her more compassionate. She had also, two years earlier, co-hosted the 83rd Academy Awards with James Franco to unenthusiastic reviews, though critics agreed she worked harder than her co-host.

The Long Second Act

She returned quietly and steadily. Christopher Nolan used her twice, as Selina Kyle in *The Dark Knight Rises* (2012) and the astronaut Amelia Brand in *Interstellar* (2014), where she nearly went hypothermic filming in Icelandic water. She signed on to *Colossal* (2016) as the first actor attached, when the film had no financing. In *Ocean's 8* (2018) she played a movie star with, in her words, "immense ego," a chance "to lean into all the ridiculous fame nonsense that I've been trying to side-step for all of these years"; Jason Di Rosso judged her the source of "the film's best moments." Owen Gleiberman called her supporting turn in *Dark Waters* "a piercing dance of agony and loyalty." Then a genuine run: Rebekah Neumann in *WeCrashed* (2022), which Angie Han praised for resisting "the temptation to turn Rebekah into an exaggerated caricature"; *Armageddon Time* (2022), which David Rooney called her best work since *Rachel Getting Married*; *Eileen* (2023), of which Ryan Lattanzio wrote that "Hathaway has never been better"; and *The Idea of You* (2024), a film Alissa Wilkinson said "succeeds mostly because of Hathaway's performance."

Why Anne Is Called a Genius

The case for Hathaway is a case about craft, not intellect, and she would probably say so herself. She is a trained stage actress who prefers the stage, claims to be frightened of the camera, and still auditions: "I always assume that every film is my last," she said in 2015. The preparation is close to obsessive — sign language, calligraphy, dance and piano for *Becoming Jane*; time spent with a Parkinson's patient for *Love & Other Drugs*; asking the crew of *Mothers' Instinct* to address her only by her character's name because child loss is her worst fear. Add a genuine singing instrument, trained from her Carnegie Hall soprano days, and the Fantine take makes sense: not a fluke of emotion but a technician who knew she had one more attempt in her.

Nobody serious calls this genius outright. *Esquire* came closest in 2018, describing a career of "subtle brilliance that has largely gone unnoticed"; Charles Isherwood wrote that she carries "the unmistakable glow of a natural star." The honest counter-case is that the same diligence is often visible on screen, and visible effort is what the backlash punished. Her accents have been a recurring liability — the Yorkshire in *One Day* drifted, and *Becoming Jane* drew criticism on the same grounds. In 2020 she collected Razzie nominations for *The Last Thing He Wanted* and *The Witches*. She is a very good actress with a top percentile work ethic and an uneven strike rate, not an original.

Legacy

Her films have grossed well over $6.8 billion, she has been a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador since 2016, and she co-founded Time's Up in 2018 with some three hundred other women in the industry. But the more interesting legacy is the shape of the career: a Disney princess who dismantled the persona deliberately, absorbed a national pile-on without going quiet, and came back with the best reviews of her life in her forties. Nolan has cast her as Penelope in *The Odyssey*, which is either a joke or the perfect part — the woman who waits, and outlasts everyone.

Achievements

• Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress — 2013
• Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance — 2010
• Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture — 2013
• BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role — 2013
• Notable work: The Princess Diaries
• Notable work: The Devil Wears Prada
• Notable work: The Dark Knight Rises
• Notable work: Rio
• Educated at New York University, Vassar College and American Academy of Dramatic Arts
• Worked as film actor, television actor and stage actor