Anne Jacqueline Hathaway (born November 12, 1982) is an American actress. Her accolades include an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. Her films have grossed over $6.8 billion worldwide. She was among the world's highest-paid actresses in 2015.
Hathaway performed in several plays in high school. As a teenager, she was cast in the television series Get Real (1999–2000) and made her breakthrough by playing the lead role in the Disney comedy The Princess Diaries (2001). After starring in a string of family films, including Ella Enchanted (2004), Hathaway made a transition to mature roles with the 2005 drama Brokeback Mountain. The comedy-drama The Devil Wears Prada (2006), in which she played an assistant to a fashion magazine editor, was her biggest commercial success to that point. She played a recovering addict in the drama Rachel Getting Married (2008), which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Hathaway had further commercial success in the comedy Get Smart (2008), the romances Bride Wars (2009), Valentine's Day (2010), and Love & Other Drugs (2010), and the fantasy film Alice in Wonderland (2010). In 2012, she starred as Catwoman in her highest-grossing film, The Dark Knight Rises, and played Fantine, a prostitute dying of tuberculosis, in the musical Les Misérables, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She has since starred in the films Interstellar (2014), The Intern (2015), Ocean's 8 (2018), The Hustle (2019), The Idea of You (2024), and in the miniseries WeCrashed (2022).
Hathaway has won a Primetime Emmy Award for her guest voice role on The Simpsons, sung for soundtracks and appeared on stage. She is a board member of the Lollipop Theatre Network, an organization that brings films to children in hospitals, and she advocates for gender equality as a UN Women goodwill ambassador.
Early life and background
Anne Jacqueline Hathaway was born on November 12, 1982, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. She is of Irish, English, German and French descent. Her father, Gerald, was a labor attorney, and her mother, Kate (née McCauley), is a former actress. Hathaway's maternal grandfather was WIP (AM) Philadelphia radio personality Joe McCauley. According to The Daily Telegraph, she was named after William Shakespeare's wife. When Hathaway was six years old, the family moved to Millburn, New Jersey, where she was raised.
upright=1.1|thumb|As a child, Hathaway appeared in several productions at [[Paper Mill Playhouse.|alt=Entrance to the theater Paper Mill Playhouse with the poster to a play outside it]]
At age eight, Hathaway was raised as Roman Catholic with what she considers to be "really strong values" and wished to be a nun during her childhood, but acting was always a high priority for her. Her relationship with the Catholic Church changed at age fifteen, after learning that her older brother was gay. In 2009, Hathaway described her religious beliefs as "a work in progress". She graduated from Millburn High School, where she played soccer and took part in many plays, including Once Upon a Mattress, in which she portrayed Winnifred. Later, she appeared in the plays Jane Eyre and Gigi, at New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse. She studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1993 and became the first teenager admitted into the Barrow Group Theater Company's acting program. She spent several semesters studying as an English major and political science minor at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, Three days after her performance at Carnegie Hall, Hathaway was cast in the short-lived Fox television series Get Real. Despite her early success, Hathaway suffered from depression and anxiety as a teenager. However, she said in 2008 that she had since grown from it.
Career
2001–2004: Early roles and breakthrough
In 2001, Hathaway starred in the Disney comedy The Princess Diaries, based on Meg Cabot's novel of the same name. Hathaway portrayed teenager Mia Thermopolis, who discovers that she is the heiress to the throne of the fictional Kingdom of Genovia. Hathaway auditioned for the role during a flight layover on the way to New Zealand. The film became a major commercial success, grossing $165 million worldwide. Many critics lauded Hathaway's performance; a BBC critic noted that "Hathaway shines in the title role and generates great chemistry" and The New York Times Elvis Mitchell found her to be "royalty in the making, a young comic talent with a scramble of features". She earned an MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Female Performance nomination for the role. The same year, Hathaway starred with Christopher Gorham in Mitch Davis's The Other Side of Heaven, which was also distributed by Disney. Inspired by John H. Groberg's memoir In the Eye of the Storm, the film met with mostly negative reviews and was a box-office failure.
Owing to the success of The Princess Diaries, People magazine named Hathaway one of its breakthrough stars of 2001. In February 2002, Hathaway starred in the City Center Encores! concert production of Carnival! in her New York City stage debut; she was cast as Lili, an optimistic orphan who falls in love with a magician. Before rehearsing with the full cast, Hathaway trained with a vocal coach for two weeks. She memorized almost all her lines and songs at the first read-through. She won a Clarence Derwent Award for Most Promising Female. Later, Hathaway voiced the audiobook release of the first three books in The Princess Diaries novels.
Hathaway portrayed princesses and appeared in family-oriented films over the next three years, subsequently becoming known in mainstream media as a children's role model. she starred in Douglas McGrath's comedy-drama Nicholas Nickleby (2002), which opened to positive reviews. However, the film did not enter wide release and failed at the North American box office, totaling less than $4 million in ticket sales. The fantasy romantic comedy Ella Enchanted (2004), in which Hathaway played the titular character, also performed poorly at the box office. She had first read the book on which the film is based when she was 16, and stated that the script was originally much closer to the source material but did not work as a film, and therefore preferred the picture the way it turned out. Hathaway sang three songs on the film's soundtrack, including a duet with singer Jesse McCartney.
In 2003, Hathaway turned down the role of Christine Daaé for Joel Schumacher's The Phantom of the Opera (2004), because the production schedule of the film overlapped with The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004). but made $134.7 million against a $45 million budget.
2005–2008: Rise to prominence
Hathaway began taking on adult roles to avoid typecasting, After replacing Tara Strong for the voice role of Red Puckett in Hoodwinked!, she starred in the drama Havoc (2005) as a spoiled socialite, appearing nude in some of its scenes. While the film was thematically different from her previous releases, Hathaway denied that her role was an attempt to be seen as a more mature actress, citing her belief that performing nudity in certain films is merely a part of what her chosen form of art demands of her; because of this belief she does not consider appearing nude in appropriate films to be morally objectionable. The film was not released in theaters in the United States due to unfavorable critical reception.
In the 2005 drama Brokeback Mountain, which depicts the emotional and sexual relationship between two men married to women, Ennis Del Mar (played by Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (played by Jake Gyllenhaal), Hathaway played Lureen, the wife of Jack. The actress was originally sent the script with the part of Ennis' wife in mind, but decided to audition for Lureen instead after she read it. She lied during the audition about her knowledge of riding so that the director Ang Lee would cast her, but did subsequently take lessons. The film received critical acclaim and several Academy Award nominations. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote that Hathaway "excels at showing Lureen's journey from cutie-pie to hard case", and Todd McCarthy of Variety credited her for "provid[ing] an entertaining contrast in wifely disappointment". Hathaway stated that the content of Brokeback Mountain was more important than its award count, and that making the film made her more aware of the kind of stories she wanted to tell as an actor. At this point, she realized that she wanted to play roles to move audiences or otherwise entertain them so much that they forget about their own lives.
thumb|upright|Hathaway at the 2007 [[Deauville American Film Festival|alt=A picture of Anne Hathaway looking into the camera.]]
Hathaway starred in the comedy-drama The Devil Wears Prada (2006), based on Lauren Weisberger's novel of the same name, as a college graduate who becomes an assistant to a powerful fashion magazine editor (played by Meryl Streep). and in preparation she volunteered for a few weeks as an assistant at an auction house. She also followed a weight-loss regimen, along with co-star Emily Blunt, which made them hungry and led to crying. Hathaway stated that working on the film made her respect the fashion industry a great deal more than she did previously, though she admitted that her personal style was something she "still can't get right". It proved to be her most widely seen film to that point, with a worldwide gross of over $326.5 million.
Originally cast in Knocked Up, Hathaway dropped out before production and was replaced with Katherine Heigl. This happened because, according to writer-director Judd Apatow, the actress was uncomfortable with the use of real footage of a woman in labor; she believed it did not contribute to the film's story. Her sole release in 2007 was the biographical romantic drama Becoming Jane, as the titular English author Jane Austen. She received a British Independent Film Award for Best Actress nomination for the film, although some critics negatively focused on her accent and performance.
In October 2008, Hathaway hosted an episode of the NBC late-night sketch comedy Saturday Night Live. She also starred in Peter Segal's film adaptation of Mel Brooks' television series Get Smart, in which she played Agent 99. Calling the role "a childhood dream come true", Hathaway learned martial arts and dancing techniques in preparation. Hathaway's two other releases of 2008 were the drama Rachel Getting Married and the mystery thriller Passengers, the latter of which was a critical and commercial failure. In Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married, she starred as a young woman who, after being released from drug rehabilitation, returns home for her sister's wedding. Portraying a character she described as "narcissistic—downright selfish", Hathaway garnered critical acclaim for her performance. Peter Travers found her to be "raw and riveting" in the role, adding that she "acts the hell out of it, achieving a state of sorrowful grace". She received Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Critics' Choice, and SAG nominations for Best Actress. She won the Critics' Choice.
2009–2011: Romantic comedies and hosting events
Hathaway starred in Bride Wars (2009), which she described as "hideously commercial—gloriously so". The romantic comedy, in which she and Kate Hudson played two best friends who become rivals after their weddings are scheduled on the same day, was a critical failure; it was named among the ten worst chick flicks in history by Time in 2010. Despite this, the film was successful financially and earned Hathaway an MTV Movie Award for Best Female Performance nomination. She played the heroine Viola in a summer 2009 production of Twelfth Night at the Delacorte Theater in New York City. Charles Isherwood opined that Hathaway "dives smoothly and with obvious pleasure into the embrace of a cohesive ensemble cast". For her portrayal of the role, she garnered a nomination for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play. In 2010, she also won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance for providing her voice for the episode "Once Upon a Time in Springfield" in The Simpsons. Hathaway voiced different characters in Family Guy in 2010 and 2011.
In 2010, Hathaway appeared as a receptionist who dates a clerk (played by Topher Grace) in the ensemble romantic comedy Valentine's Day, directed by Garry Marshall. The film was a commercial success, grossing more than $215 million worldwide against a budget of $52 million. Hathaway played the White Queen in Tim Burton's 2010 adaptation of the fantasy novels Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass alongside Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp. She summed up her character with a caption on a magnet of Happy Bunny holding a knife; "Cute but psycho. Things even out." Hathaway described her interpretation of the White Queen as "a punk-rock vegan pacifist", drawing inspiration from Debbie Harry and the artwork of Dan Flavin. Alice in Wonderland received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the film's visuals but criticized the lack of narrative coherence. Commercially, it grossed $1 billion to become the second-highest-grossing film of 2010.
alt=A bust shot of a young woman standing in a side view, her head turned to look to the camera. Her long hair is pulled back from her face and cascades down her back. She wears a black sleeveless dress with a gold trim around the back and under her arm. She wears jeweled silver floral shaped earrings and smiles softly. There is a crowd of people, slightly out of focus, in the background.|left|thumb|upright|Hathaway at the [[Nobel Peace Prize Concert in 2010, which she hosted with actor Denzel Washington]]
Hathaway reunited with Jake Gyllenhaal as a free-spirited artist with Parkinson's disease in Edward Zwick's erotic romantic comedy-drama Love & Other Drugs, based on the nonfiction book Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman by Jamie Reidy. For the role, she spent time with a Parkinson's patient to research the disease, and in preparation for its nude scenes, she watched films of Kate Winslet and Penélope Cruz who, in Hathaway's view, had performed nudity with sensitivity and dignity. She believed these scenes would not discourage socially conservative people from watching the film. Critics generally praised the film's adult romance, but were unenthusiastic about its plot elements. Hathaway's performance, which Ebert called "warm, lovable", earned her a Satellite Award and a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Comedy or Musical. Together with actor Denzel Washington, Hathaway hosted the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway in December 2010. Two months later, she and James Franco hosted the 83rd Academy Awards. Critics were unenthusiastic about their chemistry, but thought Hathaway gave her best and did a better job than Franco, who they felt seemed uninterested. At the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards, she garnered an Outstanding Variety Special (Live) nomination.
In 2011, Hathaway voiced Jewel, a female Spix's macaw from Rio de Janeiro, in the animated film Rio, produced by 20th Century Fox and Blue Sky Studios. It received generally positive reviews from film critics, who praised the visuals, voice acting and music. A commercial success, it grossed more than $484 million worldwide against a budget of $90 million. Later, Hathaway starred alongside Jim Sturgess in Lone Scherfig's One Day, based on David Nicholls' novel of the same name. The film tells the story of two young people who meet annually for twenty years after they shared a platonic one-night stand together. Hathaway was clandestinely given the script, as One Day was set in Britain, and Scherfig was not looking for any American actresses for the part. After a nonproductive meeting with Scherfig, Hathaway left a list of songs for the director, who after listening to them, cast the actress for the part.