After breaking big as a teenager with Disney’s “The Princess Diaries,” Anne Hathaway threaded a Hollywood needle. There were box office smashes (“The Devil Wears Prada”), awards fare (“Les Misérables,” for which she won an Oscar in 2013) and auteur-led efforts (“Rachel Getting Married”). But amid some personal exhaustion, a growing family and perplexing public backlash, Hathaway, now 43, receded some in recent years, landing firmly in a quieter place.
“I thought that I was in the small, weird indie section of my career,” Hathaway told Popcast, The New York Times culture chat show, in a new interview.
This year, Hathaway stars in three widely disparate films, beginning with “Mother Mary,” a haunted portrait from the director David Lowery of a Taylor Swift-Lady Gaga hybrid going through a dark period (with songs written and produced by Charli XCX, Jack Antonoff and FKA twigs), in wide release on Friday. Next comes a reprisal of one of her most beloved roles, the once-frazzled assistant Andy Sachs in “The Devil Wears Prada 2.” In July, Hathaway will appear as Penelope in Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” and she has two more films expected before year’s end.
It wasn’t until 2024 that Hathaway felt prepared for such an intense spotlight again. “I kind of stepped back and was like, OK, I’m ready for whatever comes with the pop, whatever comes with the ‘we really do need a global audience for this movie to be a hit,’” she explained in a wide-ranging conversation. “Before then, I was like, I’m not ready as a person. I’m not ready as an artist. I need to develop more, otherwise I’m just going to get eaten alive.”
That mature career phase — along with the confidence to not worry whether the online commentariat is coming for her with hatchets — has also led to a kind of personal softening.
“I used to be a very fear-based person,” Hathaway said. “I used to have an overcharged electric-fence protection system, and I’m not so interested in that anymore.
“Something happened when I turned 40 and I just realized I was living my life like it was a dress rehearsal,” she added, “and that actually, it was showtime.”
These are edited excerpts from the conversation, which can be watched here or listened to in full below.
JOE COSCARELLI Where did finding the character of Mother Mary, this tortured pop star, begin for you: Was it a research project or one of imagination?
ANNE HATHAWAY It wound up being both. I had an instinct about the character that I had from the first read — the brokenness of her, everything related to the dialogue and acting. Everything else was so much research. All of the performance stuff wound up a yearslong process to learn how to be a pop star.
COSCARELLI As Mother Mary, you sing songs by Charli XCX and FKA twigs, but when you first started playing the character, you had no idea what she would sound like.
HATHAWAY I got a text from Jack and he was like, “Hey, do you want to come in and get a vibe?” I knew what a vibe was, but I was like, is this a technical term? Siri, what’s a vibe?
Like, I’d never considered vibe-based art before, you know? For me, movie making comes from a very, very different place and acting comes from very different place. To my horror and dismay, I realized I had no idea how to sing into a microphone because all of my training was onstage, where there’s so much projection involved. Pop music is the opposite. It’s effortless power, which is not really my thing. I’m, like, all about effort [laughs].
JON CARAMANICA Your mom was an actress and a great stage singer. Was pop taboo in your house growing up, in the sense that the theater is where serious art happens?
HATHAWAY Very much so, yeah. Pop wasn’t rated in my house growing up. Real singers did Broadway. And so much of my early musical exposure was theater-based. My older brother was super into rap, then he got into straight edge hardcore. I love my older brother, so obviously I was listening to that. And then when I was in high school, that was when the pop princesses happened and MTV’s “TRL” was huge. I felt very confused, because I knew that I loved Britney Spears so much. But I had this voice of my parents in my head being like, but Stephen Sondheim is real music.
COSCARELLI What kind of conversations were you having with the director David Lowery about the pop reference points for “Mother Mary?”
HATHAWAY You meet David and he’s so obviously goth: His nails are painted black and his T-shirt never doesn’t have a skull on it. I thought it was so charming when I found out that he is a die-hard Swiftie. He had this crazy long playlist of all different types of music — I mean, obscure artists that I’d never heard of, but then also Lorde’s “Green Light,” and Max Richter. The playlist was meant to show not necessarily what Mother Mary sounded like, but the feeling that her music could give you. And right dab in the middle of that playlist was “Anti-Hero.” I always really, really liked Taylor, but that was the song where I was like, oh no, wait, she’s taking hold of my brain. And then I got much deeper into her music. And then once you see it, you can’t unsee it. You’re just like, Oh, she’s a genius.
CARAMANICA Do you now have a preferred Taylor era?
HATHAWAY No, I think they all speak to each other. The “Eras” era. To have a retrospective like that at the age that she is, and to realize that she had a vision that didn’t exist in the world, and she literally made the space that she wanted for herself.
COSCARELLI How do we consider pop stars differently than we consider actors?
HATHAWAY When I finished [“Mother Mary”] I was like, wow, I am so not a pop star. What I love to do is share what I’ve gone through, the secret parts of my soul, through a filter, through an avatar that I can privately, secretly relate to. But I don’t have to ever talk about that and I don’t ever have to reveal that. With a pop star, the image that you’re putting out is based on yourself. And so you are your own avatar.
COSCARELLI In your career, you’ve been very careful with your real life and the human side of yourself. People maybe think they know you, but, unlike a pop star, they don’t have a ton to project onto you when they’re seeing you in these iconic roles.
HATHAWAY It’s funny because I had this amazing thing happen to me right out the gate: I was in a classic movie that a generation pulled into their hearts and never let go of, and we’re still in a relationship together almost 30 years later. And that film was “The Princess Diaries.” So I don’t think of myself in iconic terms. I think about myself the way I’ve always thought of myself, which is I’m an actress. I’ve been so lucky I’ve been a part of these films that have offered people comfort for what now feels like it’s going on generations. And I’ve tried to do my best to respect and protect the legacy of that while also developing as an artist, while also just being a person who can walk down the street and be just very, very, very normal, as normal as I can.
CARAMANICA I do see a couple of threads in the type of characters that you tend to be drawn to. You have “Princess Diaries” and the original “Devil Wears Prada” — young woman, new to the world, a lot of systems imposed upon that person saying actually what you need is rigor. In the other direction, “Mother Mary,” “The Intern” — a very stitched together character who needs to learn to be unstitched, to find that softness or uncertainty within.
HATHAWAY When the first “Devil Wears Prada” came out, it was so huge and I had that thing that happens where suddenly you’re getting sent a bunch of scripts and you’re like, oh, these are all the same character. I was 24 years old, I think, and I remember thinking to myself, that’s the way you are seen. That is what you have to resist right now. I got so lucky with those two, they were such high watermarks, that I thought if I make other ones and they’re sort of the ersatz version of that, how am I gonna feel?
COSCARELLI You do “Brokeback Mountain” with Ang Lee, “Rachel Getting Married” …
HATHAWAY Jonathan Demme. And then, here’s the thing, and this is one of the reasons I feel so drawn to David Lowery as an artist, is you realize, maybe my sensibility is more indie-auteur, but I also want to leave the lights on. I want to respect the legacy. So every few years you’re like, it’s probably time to do a “Valentine’s Day.”
COSCARELLI In coming back to these iconic characters with “Devil Wears Prada 2” and “Princess Diaries 3,” which is in the works, did you have any reservations about playing the hits?
HATHAWAY I don’t care anymore about that kind of stuff. I’m so shocked by it. I thought that I was in the small, weird indie section of my career. I thought that was where I was going to live. And so I’m actually pretty delighted that somebody’s asked me to come back and basically do the equivalent of a stadium tour.
COSCARELLI Your Eras tour!
HATHAWAY Because I went off and I did my weird thing, I appreciate, in a way that I couldn’t have when I was so young, the artistry of the hits. There’s a reason why they’re beloved. They’re really, really good. “The Devil Wears Prada” is a wonderful movie.
COSCARELLI It’s really hard to write “Anti-Hero.”
HATHAWAY It’s really hard to write “Blank Space,” you know? And it shouldn’t get dinged because we’ve listened to it several thousand times.
COSCARELLI It’s also coinciding with this amazing moment in your career arc, in which you’re among the most beloved people on the internet.
HATHAWAY [maniacal laughter] Plot twist! [more maniacal laughter]
CARAMANICA The memes are in your favor.
HATHAWAY For now … We’ll see.
CARAMANICA It can come for any of us.
HATHAWAY Oh, I know.
COSCARELLI Have you allowed yourself to feel the good side, having been on the other side of it at various moments?
HATHAWAY I don’t know what you’re referring to [laughs]. I’m relieved that I don’t have to deal with the bad side for now. But I do think that what both have taught me is that it’s probably best to have a certain level of detachment from all of that.
COSCARELLI Do you like working at this speed — five movies this year, spanning centuries and vibes — or is it just, I gotta take them while they’re coming?
HATHAWAY That kind of a pace is unsustainable, particularly now. I have young children. I just thought of the last three years as an anomaly. I can’t see anybody asking me to maintain that pace when my kids are out of my house, which will be like late 50s, early 60s. So I see this as kind of a one-off, and I’m just enjoying it because it’s never gonna happen again.
Joe Coscarelli is a culture reporter for The Times and a co-host of the Times podcast “Popcast.”
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