Anne Hathaway

Anne Hathaway Bio

Anne Jacqueline Hathaway (born November 12, 1982) is an American actress whose work has earned 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, and she appeared on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list in 2009. She was among the world’s highest-paid actresses in 2015. Known for moving easily between family comedies, prestige dramas, and large-scale blockbusters, Hathaway has built a career defined by range and consistency.

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 McCauley, is a former actress whose performance in the first national tour of Les Misérables as Fantine sparked Hathaway’s lifelong fascination with the stage. Hathaway has an older brother, Michael, and a younger brother, Thomas. When she was six, the family moved to Millburn, New Jersey, where she was raised.

Hathaway attended Brooklyn Heights Montessori School and Wyoming Elementary School in Millburn before graduating from Millburn High School, where she played soccer and appeared in school plays, including Once Upon a Mattress in the role of Winnifred. She later performed in productions of Jane Eyre and Gigi at New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse. In 1993, she studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and became the first teenager admitted into the Barrow Group Theater Company’s acting program.

She spent several semesters studying English and political science at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, before transferring to New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Between 1998 and 1999, she sang soprano with the All-Eastern U.S. High School Honors Chorus at Carnegie Hall and appeared in plays at Seton Hall Preparatory School in West Orange, New Jersey. Early in her career, her acting style and appearance were often compared to Judy Garland and Audrey Hepburn, both of whom she has cited as favorites.

Path to Acting

Only three days after her performance at Carnegie Hall, Hathaway was cast in the short-lived Fox television series Get Real, playing the teenager Meghan Green alongside Jon Tenney, Debrah Farentino, and Jesse Eisenberg. She missed her first college semester to film her cinematic debut, The Princess Diaries (2001), a Disney comedy in which she played teenager Mia Thermopolis, who learns she is the heiress to the throne of the fictional Kingdom of Genovia. The film became a major commercial success, grossing $165 million worldwide, and many critics praised her performance, with People naming her one of its breakthrough stars of 2001.

Over the next several years, Hathaway portrayed princesses and appeared in family-oriented films, becoming known in mainstream media as a children’s role model. After voicing Haru Yoshioka in the English-language version of The Cat Returns (2002) and starring in Nicholas Nickleby (2002), she played the title role in the fantasy romantic comedy Ella Enchanted (2004). Her early stage work included a 2002 City Center Encores! concert production of Carnival!, for which she won a Clarence Derwent Award for Most Promising Female, and a 2009 production of Twelfth Night at the Delacorte Theater in New York City, which earned her a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Play.

Anne Hathaway Career

Early Career (2001–2005)

Hathaway’s film debut in The Princess Diaries (2001) established her as a rising Disney star, followed by supporting roles in Nicholas Nickleby (2002) and Ella Enchanted (2004), and a return to the franchise with The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004). During this period she also voiced The Cat Returns and the audiobooks of the first three Princess Diaries novels, while building her stage résumé in New York.

In 2005, Hathaway made a deliberate transition to more mature roles with Ang Lee’s drama Brokeback Mountain, in which she played the wife of Jake Gyllenhaal’s character. The film marked a turning point in her career and was followed by the comedy-drama The Devil Wears Prada (2006), in which she played an assistant to a powerful fashion magazine editor played by Meryl Streep. The film became her biggest commercial success to that point and cemented her status as a leading Hollywood actress.

Breakthrough (2006–2012)

After The Devil Wears Prada, Hathaway played a recovering addict in the drama Rachel Getting Married (2008), earning a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She followed this with commercial successes including the comedy Get Smart (2008), the romances Bride Wars (2009) and Valentine’s Day (2010), the fantasy film Alice in Wonderland (2010), in which she played the White Queen, and the romantic comedy-drama Love and Other Drugs (2010), which brought her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical.

In 2010, Hathaway won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance for the episode Once Upon a Time in Springfield of The Simpsons, and she voiced Jewel in the animated film Rio (2011). In 2012, she reached the peak of her commercial and critical success: she played Catwoman in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, her highest-grossing film, and Fantine in the musical Les Misérables. Her performance as Fantine earned her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, along with a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. That same year, she and James Franco co-hosted the 83rd Academy Awards.

Notable Works and Milestones

Hathaway’s signature works include The Princess Diaries, Brokeback Mountain, The Devil Wears Prada, Rachel Getting Married, Alice in Wonderland, The Dark Knight Rises, Les Misérables, and Interstellar. Her films have grossed over $6.8 billion worldwide, and she received a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in May 2019. In November 2018, she was one of 50 nominees for the New Jersey Hall of Fame.

Anne Hathaway Award Nominations

Across her career, Anne Hathaway has earned multiple major nominations for her film and television work. These include a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for Rachel Getting Married (2008), a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical for Love and Other Drugs (2010), and a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Special (Live) for co-hosting the 83rd Academy Awards. She has received three Golden Globe Award nominations overall and a British Academy Film Award nomination.

Anne Hathaway Awards Won

Anne Hathaway has won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a British Academy Film Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. Her Academy Award, Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Screen Actors Guild Award all came for her portrayal of Fantine in Les Misérables (2012). Her Primetime Emmy Award was for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance for The Simpsons in 2010.

Anne Hathaway Family

Hathaway was raised in a close-knit family in Millburn, New Jersey, alongside her older brother Michael and her younger brother Thomas. Her father, Gerald Hathaway, worked as a labor attorney, while her mother, Kate McCauley Hathaway, is a former stage actress whose performance in Les Misérables inspired Hathaway’s own love of acting. Her maternal grandfather was Philadelphia radio personality Joe McCauley.

Personal Life

Hathaway married actor and businessman Adam Shulman on September 29, 2012, in Big Sur, California, in a traditional Jewish ceremony. The couple’s first son was born in March 2016, and their second son was born in November 2019. Hathaway has been open about her teenage struggles with depression and anxiety, which she later overcame, and in October 2018, she gave up alcohol and has since described herself as sober. She is a longtime supporter of charitable causes, including the Lollipop Theatre Network, and was appointed a UN Women goodwill ambassador in 2016.