When Anne Hathaway was growing up, she watched on in silent delight as her mother transformed into perfect strangers.
The sight of her mum and actress, Kate, performing on stage left an indelible mark on the young Hathaway.
It paved a path to her own film career, a career that’s had many ups and some downs. Yet, even in the darker moments, she’s emerged triumphant.
Hathaway was eight when she begged to join Kate on the first travelling tour of Les Misérables across America. For her parents, there was only one answer – no.
“My husband and I had seen perfectly nice children become little monsters with all that attention,” Kate told the New York Post in 2019.
“We said, ‘Absolutely no, darling. Your job right now is to be a child.'”
Instead, Hathaway’s parents enrolled the future Oscar winner into acting classes at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey.
The family of five – Hathaway is the middle child of three – moved into the area from Brooklyn when she was six. Hathaway thrived.
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve always played make-believe … It’s something that I’ve always done, that I’ve always been comfortable doing,” she said in 2009.
By the age of 15, the budding star believed she needed an agent. She told her parents she was keen to book commercials, adding It would help pay for university.
She soon signed with an agent and manager and while her parents were supportive, they also offered their daughter grounding.
“I remember saying to Annie, ‘You’re entering a world where all you’re going to hear is yes. We’re the ones who are going to say no when you need to hear it.’ And I think that really helped keep her grounded,” Kate said.
Hathaway was 16 and studying at the prestigious theatre company, Barrow Group, in New York when she booked her first television job.
She played the role of Meghan Green in the US drama Get Real, alongside a cast including The Social Network star Jesse Eisenberg.
After graduating, Hathaway went in search for film roles. It set her on a new path.
Her debut feature role was in the now iconic 2001 film The Princess Diaries. It ended up being a family-affair of sorts, with Hathaway’s mother having a bit part in film.
“I was 17 years old when we made this and so I hadn’t met as many people yet in my life. I knew Gary Marshall was really special and I knew Julie Andrews was really special… This was the film that changed my life,” Hathaway told Vanity Fair in a 2024 interview.
“It felt so big at the time, and it wound up being so big and it’s kind of just gotten bigger as my life has progressed.”
Her performance as Mia Thermopolis, the nerdy schoolgirl who discovers she’s royalty, was lauded by critics and film fans.
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The New York Times compared her to the likes of Julia Roberts, describing her as “royalty in the making, a young comic talent with a scramble of features”.
The film grossed US$165.3 million worldwide on a budget of US$26 million.
It wasn’t long before a sequel was in the works. The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement was released in 2004. The screenplay, written by the legendary Shonda Rhimes, was a commercial success.
Hathaway shifted away from teenage roles in 2005 with Ang Lee’s romantic western and Oscar winning Brokeback Mountain.
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She starred as Lureen Newsome alongside a stellar cast of Jake Gyllenhaal, the late Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams.
At the time, the film was considered groundbreaking for its queer storyline, though it still stirred outrage among conservatives.
“I never cared about what anyone else thought to be completely honest. I’ve grown up, literally, and I’m no joking, with gay men in my life since the day I was born,” Hathaway said during a 2005 interview with E! News.
“So, there’s nothing strange about it to me and I never stop to worry about the other people who it might be strange for because, from my perspective, it’s time for them to catch up.”
She continued her run of successful meatier roles with The Devil Wears Prada. Getting to work with Meryl Streep was a literal dream for Hathaway.
“She is just divine. As a human being, she has basically accomplished everything that I want to do,” she told the Associated Press in 2006.
“It’s not that she just gets inside the character, she’s just absolutely at the center of all of her choices, of the truth of the character. And as an artist, that’s what you dream of. Nothing can push her off that. The weather won’t affect her, (or) silly things, like someone’s cell phone going off. It won’t make her lose focus in her character.
“And to be around that – to have been brought into that during our scenes – I just felt like I was shaving years off my discovery as an actress to realise, ‘OK, that’s what this feels like.’ Now I just have to get there myself.”
Hathaway continued to push her range with a string of successful – yet entirely different roles – with Rachel Getting Married, Love & Other Drugs and The Dark Knight Rises.
She scored her first Oscar nomination in Rachel Getting Married. She was nominated in the Best Actress category at the 2009 awards. She lost to Kate Winslet in The Reader.
Hathaway’s time would soon come. Though, she would be forced to navigate a bumpy road to get there.
She had proved herself to be the model performer, both on screen and off. She had graduated from the goofy, having finessed her comic timing and emotionally intelligent performances on screen. Off screen, she was praised for her work ethic.
Yet, in 2011, according to public opinion, she made the first of a major misstep. She agreed to host the Academy Awards with actor James Franco. It wasn’t a perfect match.
“I was just shooting energy to the back [of the house]. It was like a big party. It was great,” she said in 2012.
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“I think it looked slightly manic and hyper cheerleadery on screen… Whether or not it was an actual failure, it was perceived as a massive failure.”
Hathaway returned to the Oscars stage a year later winning for best supporting actress for her role as Fantine in a film adaptation of Les Misérables.
The role was a moment of synchronicity for the actress whose mother played the same role two decades earlier.
“We decided a long time ago that she was my mum [and not a manager-type], but on this one, I did go to her,” the then 30-year-old actress told The Hollywood Reporter.
“We just talked about the character. She told me a lot about her experience playing Fantine, which gave me even more confidence that it was in my blood, in my DNA, it was a family legacy.
“I think it allowed me to connect on a deeper level to the character, knowing how much it meant to her.”
Yet, again the public appeared unyielding to accept Hathaway in the moment. During the 2013 award season, the public and the Internet trolls turned on the actress.
She was criticised for her acceptance speeches. Whether they be tempered with soft or overt emotion, Hathaway’s couldn’t stop the campaign of online “Hathahate”.
“You’re supposed to be happy. I didn’t feel that way,” Hathaway told The Sun on Sunday.
“I felt wrong that I was standing there in a gown that cost more than some people are going to see in their lifetime and winning an award for portraying pain that still felt very much a part of our collective experience as human beings.
“I tried to pretend that I was happy and I got called out on it, big time.”
She once described the experience as having “my monster out there”, which she said was ultimately empowering.
“I did have the internet turn on me and hate me and it was like a whole big thing and it was a really good thing for me personally,” she said.
“You can be incredibly empowered because of those things. So I guess what I’d say is bad s–t happens, don’t fear it — just go with it, flow with it.”
Yet, while she ultimately overcame the barrage of online hate, it did affected her career.
“A lot of people wouldn’t give me roles because they were so concerned about how toxic my identity had become online,” she told Vanity Fair in 2024.
Yet, The Hustle actress credited British-American director Christopher Nolan for seeing past the noise and casting her a in his 2014 sci-fi film, Interstellar.
The pair had first worked together on Nolan’s 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises.
“I had an angel in Christopher Nolan, who did not care about that and gave me one of the most beautiful roles I’ve had in one of the best films that I’ve been a part of,” she said.
She said her career “did not lose momentum the way it could have if he hadn’t backed me.”
In the years since Hathahate, Hathaway has regained fan support. Along the way she has also found more of herself and her style.
She has garnered fans over the years for her iconic style evolution and for her voice.
In 2023, following a screening of her gripping Hitchcock-style thriller Eileen at the Sundance Film Festival, the actress spoke about a moment earlier in her career.
“I just remembered one of the very first questions I ever got asked when I started acting and had to do press was: Are you a good girl or a bad girl?” Hathaway said.
“I was 16. And my 16-year-old self wanted to respond with this film.”
Today, Hathaway is a 41-year-old actress, wife and mother to two sons.
While it will never be clear if she’s achieved all the success she dreamed for herself, she has far exceeded the expectations of a female in her industry.
“When I started out as a child, I was warned that my career would fall off a cliff at the age of 35, which is something I know a lot of women face,” Hathaway told Porter.
“The thing that has evolved during [that time] is that more women are having careers deeper into their lives, which I think is fantastic.
“Obviously, it doesn’t mean we should have a ticker tape parade – someone said this to me the other day: ‘There’s so much to be proud of and there’s so much to fix.'”
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