Anne Hathaway

Anne Hathaway Bio

Anne Jacqueline Hathaway, born November 12, 1982, is an American actress whose career spans family comedies, dramatic roles, and major studio blockbusters. 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, and she appeared on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list in 2009. She was also among the world’s highest-paid actresses in 2015.

Beyond her film work, Hathaway serves on the board 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. In May 2019, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in recognition of her contributions to the film industry.

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. She has an older brother, Michael, and a younger brother, Thomas. When Hathaway was six years old, the family moved to Millburn, New Jersey, where she was raised.

At age eight, Hathaway watched her mother perform in the first national tour of Les Misérables as Fantine and instantly became fascinated with the stage, though her parents were not keen on allowing her to pursue an acting career. After this, Kate quit acting to raise Hathaway and her brothers. Hathaway was raised as Roman Catholic with what she considered to be strong values and once wished to be a nun during her childhood. Her relationship with the Catholic Church changed at age fifteen, after learning that her older brother was gay. The family later joined the Episcopal Church before eventually leaving that as well.

Hathaway attended Brooklyn Heights Montessori School and Wyoming Elementary School in Millburn. 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. She also appeared in 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, before transferring to New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.

Path to Acting

Between 1998 and 1999, Hathaway sang soprano with the All-Eastern U.S. High School Honors Chorus at Carnegie Hall and acted in plays at Seton Hall Preparatory School in West Orange, New Jersey. Early in her film career, her acting style and appearance would be likened to Judy Garland and Audrey Hepburn, both of whom she has cited as favorites. Three days after her performance at Carnegie Hall, Hathaway was cast in the short-lived Fox television series Get Real (1999–2000), where she played teenager Meghan Green alongside Jon Tenney, Debrah Farentino, and Jesse Eisenberg. Despite her early success, Hathaway suffered from depression and anxiety as a teenager, though she said in 2008 that she had since grown from it.

She missed her first college semester for the filming of her cinematic debut, The Princess Diaries (2001). According to Hathaway, she never regretted not completing her degree, as she enjoyed being with others who were trying to grow up. The film became a major commercial success, grossing $165 million worldwide. People magazine named her one of its breakthrough stars of 2001. In February 2002, Hathaway made her New York City stage debut in the City Center Encores! concert production of Carnival!, playing Lili, an optimistic orphan. Critics generally praised her, and she won a Clarence Derwent Award for Most Promising Female.

Anne Hathaway Career

Early Career (2001–2004)

In 2001, Hathaway starred in the Disney comedy The Princess Diaries, based on Meg Cabot’s novel of the same name. She portrayed teenager Mia Thermopolis, who discovers that she is the heiress to the throne of the fictional Kingdom of Genovia. Director Garry Marshall initially considered Liv Tyler for the role, but cast Hathaway after his granddaughters suggested that she had the best “princess” hair. Many critics lauded Hathaway’s performance, and a BBC critic noted that she “shines in the title role and generates great chemistry.” She earned an MTV Movie Award nomination for Best Breakthrough Female Performance for the role.

Over the next three years, Hathaway portrayed princesses and appeared in family-oriented films, becoming known in mainstream media as a children’s role model. She voiced Haru Yoshioka for the English version of The Cat Returns (2002) and starred in Douglas McGrath’s Nicholas Nickleby (2002). The fantasy romantic comedy Ella Enchanted (2004) performed poorly at the box office, but she sang three songs on its soundtrack, including a duet with singer Jesse McCartney. In 2004, she also reprised her princess role in The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, which made $134.7 million against a $45 million budget.

Breakthrough (2005–2012)

Hathaway began taking on adult roles to avoid typecasting. She appeared in the drama Havoc (2005) and then starred as Lureen in the 2005 drama Brokeback Mountain, opposite Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote that Hathaway “excels at showing Lureen’s journey from cutie-pie to hard case.” She then starred in the comedy-drama The Devil Wears Prada (2006) as a college graduate who becomes an assistant to a powerful fashion magazine editor played by Meryl Streep. It proved to be her most widely seen film to that point, with a worldwide gross of over $326.5 million.

She followed this with the biographical romantic drama Becoming Jane (2007), the comedy Get Smart (2008), and the drama Rachel Getting Married (2008), in which she portrayed a young woman released from drug rehabilitation. Hathaway garnered critical acclaim and received Academy Award, Golden Globe, Critics’ Choice, and SAG nominations for Best Actress for Rachel Getting Married. She continued with commercial successes including the romances Bride Wars (2009), Valentine’s Day (2010), and Love & Other Drugs (2010), and the fantasy film Alice in Wonderland (2010), which grossed $1 billion.

She then voiced Jewel in the animated film Rio (2011) and starred alongside Jim Sturgess in One Day (2011). In 2012, she played the sly, morally ambiguous cat burglar Selina Kyle / Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises, the final installment in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy, which grossed more than $1 billion worldwide. That same year, she portrayed Fantine, a prostitute dying of tuberculosis, in Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables, for which she won the Academy Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, and BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress. In preparation, she consumed fewer than 500 calories a day to lose 25 pounds (11 kg), researched prostitution, and cut her hair.

Notable Works and Milestones

Her signature work includes her Academy Award-winning turn in Les Misérables, alongside her blockbuster roles as Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises and as Amelia Brand in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014). She also won a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Dark Knight Rises, a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance for The Simpsons in 2010, and a Critics’ Choice Award for Rachel Getting Married.

Anne Hathaway Award Nominations

Hathaway has earned nominations across major industry ceremonies throughout her career, including two Academy Award nominations, three Golden Globe Award nominations, and a British Academy Film Award nomination. She has also received recognition from the Critics’ Choice Awards, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, the Satellite Awards, the Saturn Awards, the Drama Desk Awards, and the British Independent Film Awards for her performances across drama, comedy, musical, and voice work.

Anne Hathaway Awards Won

Hathaway has won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Fantine in Les Misérables. She also won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance for The Simpsons, a Critics’ Choice Award for Rachel Getting Married, a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Dark Knight Rises, and a Clarence Derwent Award for Most Promising Female for her stage work in Carnival!.

Anne Hathaway Family

Anne Jacqueline Hathaway was born to father Gerald, a labor attorney, and mother Kate (née McCauley), a former actress. Her maternal grandfather was WIP (AM) Philadelphia radio personality Joe McCauley. She has an older brother, Michael, and a younger brother, Thomas. The family moved from Brooklyn, New York to Millburn, New Jersey when she was six years old, where she was raised.

Personal Life

Hathaway dated Italian real estate developer Raffaello Follieri from 2004 to 2008. She married actor and businessman Adam Shulman in a traditional Jewish ceremony in Big Sur on September 29, 2012. The couple sold their wedding photograph and donated the proceeds to the same-sex marriage advocacy group Freedom to Marry, and later hosted the group’s National Engagement Party, which raised $500,000. They have two sons, born in March 2016 and November 2019.