Anne Hathaway

Anne Hathaway (birthname: Anne Jacqueline Hathaway) has enjoyed a remarkably successful film career from the start when she made her splashy debut in the Garry Marshall-directed The Princess Diaries (2001). Equally notable about the talented Hathaway, who has been rightly compared to Audrey Hepburn, is her evolution from playing nice, fresh-scrubbed characters to more worldly, complicated roles.

With  The Princess Diaries (2001), Hathaway was paired with the legendary Julie Andrews, and Hector Elizondo, Heather Matarazzo, and Mandy Moore; as a surprise box-office smash, it launched a sequel, The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004), also with Andrews and again directed by Marshall, and earning $135 million worldwide.

In between these two Disney hits, Anne Hathaway co-starred with Christopher Gorham in writer-director Mitch Davis’ The Other Side of Heaven (2001); writer-director Douglas McGrath’s Dickens adaptation for MGM and 20^th Century Fox, Nicholas Nickleby (2002), starring Jamie Bell, Jim Broadbent, Tom Courtenay, Alan Cumming, Edward Fox, Charlie Hunnam, Juliet Stevenson, Timothy Spall, and Christopher Plummer; playing a vocal character in Hiroyuki Morita’s animated Japanese fantasy, The Cat Returns (2002); and Hathaway’s first above-the-title starring role in the fantasy comedy, Ella Enchanted (2004), with Hugh Dancy, Cary Elwes, Vivica A. Fox, and Minnie Driver.

Often overlooked in Anne Hathaway’s filmography is the fact that she starred in the only narrative feature directed by documentary master Barbara Kopple, Havoc (2005), with Bijou Phillips, Michael Biehn, and Laura San Giacomo.

After Havoc—which was Hathaway’s actual first venture into serious film drama—she landed a coveted supporting role, as wife to Jake Gyllenhaal, in filmmaker Ang Lee’s landmark film, Brokeback Mountain (2005), based on Annie Proulx’s short story, co-starring Heath Ledger, Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Randy Quaid, and Anna Faris, while earning over ten times its $14 million budget and winning three Oscars including Lee for Best Director.

Hathaway actually enjoyed a bigger career boost co-starring with the Oscar-nominated Meryl Streep in the hit comedy-drama, The Devil Wears Prada (2006), co-starring Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci, and Adrien Grenier, and earning $326 million worldwide. Although criticized for her American-style portrayal of Jane Austen, Hathaway led the way in the Julian Jarrold-directed Becoming Jane (2007), with James McAvoy, Julie Walters, James Cromwell, and Maggie Smith. Switching gears, Hathaway had a lark as Agent 99 opposite Steve Carell in Get Smart (2008), with Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, Terence Stamp, and James Caan, grossing a healthy three times its $80 million budget.

Anne Hathaway’s biggest artistic triumph to this point in her career came with the Jonathan Demme-directed Rachel Getting Married (2008), with a Best Actress Oscar nomination as confirmation, marking a more mature phase for the actor. Though slammed by critics, Hathaway enjoyed more box-office success with the rom-com, Bride Wars (2009), co-starring Kate Hudson, Chris Pratt, and Candice Bergen, earning nearly four times its $30 million budget.

Another slight rom-com followed the ensemble-driven Valentine’s Day (2010), with Hathaway under rom-com master Garry Marshall’s direction, followed by a co-starring role in Tim Burton’s box-office smash ($1.02 billion), Alice in Wonderland (2010), co-starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Crispin Glover, Mia Wasikowska, and Alan Rickman. Hathaway proved that she was box-office gold once again in director Ed Zwick’s comedy-drama, Love & Other Drugs (2010), in her second pairing with Gyllenhaal.

Like so many big stars, Anne Hathaway lent her vocal talents to a major animated feature, 20^th Century Fox’s well-received Rio (2011), grossing nearly a half-billion dollars globally, with Jesse Eisenberg, will I am,  Jamie Foxx, George Lopez, and Tracy Morgan, and following up with a sequel, Rio 2 (2014), which matched the original’s commercial success worldwide under Carlos Saldanha’s direction.

After a disappointment with the romantic drama directed by Lone Scherfig, One Day (2011), Hathaway rebounded in a big way as Catwoman in Christopher Nolan’s brawny, impressive The Dark Knight Rises (2012), co-starring with Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, and Morgan Freeman, marking her second movie in three years to gross over $1 billion worldwide.

The same year, Anne Hathaway co-starred in another epic, director Tom Hooper’s adaptation of the musical, Les Misérables (2012), co-starring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne, Helena Bonham Carter, and Sacha Baron Cohen, earning eight Oscar nominations and $441 million worldwide.

Hathaway reunited with filmmaker Nolan for the multi-Oscar-nominated sci-fi drama, Interstellar (2014), grossing an impressive $701 million worldwide, and co-starring Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, Ellen Burstyn, and Michael Caine. Hathaway continued her consistent box-office track record with the critically dismissed but audience-pleasing comedy-drama from writer-director Nancy Meyers, The Intern (2015), with Robert De Niro and Rene Russo.

A second spin with Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016), this time only produced but not directed by Tim Burton, proved to be a relative failure with critics and audiences, followed by an acclaimed but commercially poor fantasy black comedy from writer-director Nacho Vigalondo, Colossal (2016), which allowed Hathaway to stretch herself in a new genre opposite Jason Sudeikis and Tim Blake Nelson.

Hathaway upped the sexy quotient in writer-director Gary Ross’s women-dominated Ocean’s 8 (2018), holding her own alongside stars Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett, with Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Awkwafina, Rihanna, and Helena Bonham Carter, and grossing nearly $300 million globally.

Following a disappointing result ($14 million global returns on a $25 million budget) and poor reviews for the mystery-thriller, Serenity (2019), co-starring Matthew McConaughey and Diane Lane, Anne Hathaway bounced back with the more profitable comedy remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) and Bedtime Story (1964), The Hustle (2019), co-starring Rebel Wilson, Dean Norris, and Tim Blake Nelson, withstanding poor reviews for a global return of over $97 million, over four times budget ($21 million).

Hathaway returned to serious drama under the sober-minded direction of Todd Haynes in the topical legal thriller, Dark Waters (2019), starring Mark Ruffalo, Tim Robbins, Bill Camp, Victor Garber, Mare Winningham, and Bill Pullman, and released by Focus Features. Despite the source material of a Joan Didion novel and a Sundance Film Festival premiere, plus a cast led by Hathaway, Willem Dafoe, Ben Affleck, Rosie Perez, and Toby Jones, the Dee Rees-directed political thriller, The Last Thing He Wanted (2020), became among the low-scoring Hathaway-starring movies on Rotten Tomatoes (5%) and Metacritic (35), with critics labeling it “incomprehensible.”

Following the digitally-released HBO Max movie remake of Nicolas Roeg’s 1990 film, The Witches (2020) starring Hathaway and originally intended for theatrical release by Warner Bros. but pulled due to the COVID pandemic, Hathaway took on a rom-com that used the pandemic to artistic advantage with Locked Down (2021), directed by Doug Liman and co-starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, and again released during COVID on HBO Max.

With writer-producer-director James Gray, Hathaway tackled one of her most dramatically important roles to date in Armageddon Time (2022), co-starring Jeremy Strong, Banks Repeta, and Anthony Hopkins, and premiering at the Cannes Film Festival. Hathaway starred in the first feature adaptation of an Otessa Moshfegh novel, Eileen (date to be announced), directed by William Oldroyd, and co-starring Thomasin McKenzie, Jefferson White, Marin Ireland, and Shea Whigham, followed by writer-director Rebecca Miller’s music-based rom-com, She Came to Me (date to be announced), with Peter Dinklage and Marisa Tomei.

Hathaway shared top-billing with Jessica Chastain in the Benoit Delhomme-directed family drama, Mothers’ Instinct (date to be announced), with Josh Charles, and Anders Danielsen Lie, and then starred in the Michael Showalter-directed feature set during the Coachella festival, The Idea of You, based on Robinne Lee’s novel and produced by Amazon Studios.

The Muppets joined Anne Hathaway for the New York-set comedy, Sesame Street (date to be announced), co-starring the comic Bo Burnham and musician Chance the Rapper, and then Bill Murray (voicing a stray dog named Bum) allied with Hathaway for the feature, Bum’s Rush (date to be announced), directed by Aaron Schneider.