Until this year, the Oscar-winning actress Anne Hathaway had not appeared in a major studio film in nearly a decade. But when she returned, she did so in monumental fashion.
Since April, Hathaway has starred in five major films, and after this weekend’s success of “Verity,” she appears to be the first woman to have leading roles in three films that opened at No. 1 at the box office in a single year.
“Verity,” an adaptation of a Colleen Hoover novel of the same name, earned an estimated $33 million at the box office this weekend, snagging the top spot by beating the ecological satire “Digger,” starring Tom Cruise, by $25 million. In the psychological thriller, Hathaway plays Verity Crawford, a novelist left in a catatonic state after a car accident. Dakota Johnson portrays the writer brought in to finish Crawford’s work.
Hathaway’s winning trajectory began in May, when she earned her first No. 1 film by reviving her role as the chaotic but clever journalist Andy Sachs in “The Devil Wears Prada 2.” In July, she did it again, as Penelope in Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey.”
Scoring three No. 1 films on an opening weekend in a calendar year is never easy. The precise history of the feat seems hard to pin down, but Jim Carrey did it in 1994 with “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,” “The Mask” and “Dumb and Dumber.” Ten years later, in 2004, Ben Stiller pulled off a trifecta with “Along Came Polly,” “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story” and “Meet the Fockers.” Many actors have appeared in more than one No. 1 movie in a year, but some of those included cameo appearances or other small roles.
By any measure, Hathaway has had a busy year. “Verity,” her fifth and final release of 2026, followed her work as the title character in the pop-fever dream “Mother Mary” in April; her performance in “The Devil Wears Prada 2” the next month; and “The Odyssey” in mid-July. In August, Hathaway played a brave mother in the dinosaur adventure tale “The End of Oak Street.”
When she first saw the release schedule for this year, Hathaway told The Hollywood Reporter in August, “I kind of thought I was being punked.” She informed the studios, “As long as audiences don’t get sick of my face.”
Scott Mendelson, a longtime film analyst who writes a box-office newsletter on Substack called “The Outside Scoop,” said Hathaway’s success this year made it clear that audiences were not at all sick of her.
“She is a trusted name, and when you have the trust — whether you’re DiCaprio in the mid-2010s,” he said, “or you’re Timothée Chalamet or Robert Pattinson right now — that is how you get audiences to show up for a movie.”
Before this year, Hathaway’s most recent mainstream theatrical movie was in 2018 with “Ocean’s Eight,” in which she starred with, among others, Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett. She then made a series of small but notable films, including “The Witches” in 2020 and “Mothers’ Instinct” in 2024.
Hathaway’s “renaissance” year at the box office signals the demand for more female-driven films, according to Christina Lane, a professor of film studies at the University of Miami School of Communication. “Women have been a key factor in driving this year’s box office,” she said, offering as examples “Wuthering Heights” (which starred Margot Robbie); “Send Help” (led by Rachel McAdams); and “Disclosure Day” (Emily Blunt).
To be sure, repeatedly climbing to the top of the box office is not only about hard work or taking an extended break from major films before roaring back.
“A box office weekend may depend on a lot of factors, and that includes luck,” Lane said. Such good fortune can be abetted when studios release films on carefully chosen dates, and when co-stars enhance a movie’s appeal.
Other factors are at play, too, according to Lane, including a director’s status and any “ready-made audience” a film may have, like its status as a sequel or its basis in a best-selling book. At the same time, Lane added, Hathaway “represents a new trend in that she is powerful because of the small part that she brings to a big package.”
In that sense, Lane cautioned that while Hathaway may have dominated the box office this year, it was not a return to a previous time. “We’re very far from the days when it was typical to see a female box office draw, like in the way that Julia Roberts or Demi Moore once were,” she said.
A representative for Hathaway declined to comment on the actress’s recent triumphs, saying that she was officially on maternity leave. (Hathaway is pregnant with her third child.)
But the star recently told Entertainment Tonight that she planned to “vanish in a plume of smoke” after the release of “Verity.”
“You’re not going to see me until you have to,” she said.
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