After breaking big as a teenager with Disney\u2019s \u201cThe Princess Diaries,\u201d Anne Hathaway threaded a Hollywood needle. There were box office smashes (\u201cThe Devil Wears Prada\u201d), awards fare (\u201cLes Mis\u00e9rables,\u201d for which she won an Oscar in 2013) and auteur-led efforts (\u201cRachel Getting Married\u201d). 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought that I was in the small, weird indie section of my career,\u201d Hathaway told Popcast, The New York Times culture chat show, in a new interview.<\/p>\n
This year, Hathaway stars in three widely disparate films, beginning with \u201cMother Mary,\u201d 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 reprise of one of her most beloved roles, the once-frazzled assistant Andy Sachs in \u201cThe Devil Wears Prada 2.\u201d In July, Hathaway will appear as Penelope in Christopher Nolan\u2019s \u201cThe Odyssey,\u201d and she has two more films expected before year\u2019s end.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until 2024 that Hathaway felt prepared for such an intense spotlight again. \u201cI kind of stepped back and was like, OK, I\u2019m ready for whatever comes with the pop, whatever comes with the \u2018we really do need a global audience for this movie to be a hit,\u2019\u201d she explained in a wide-ranging conversation. \u201cBefore then, I was like, I\u2019m not ready as a person. I\u2019m not ready as an artist. I need to develop more, otherwise I\u2019m just going to get eaten alive.\u201d<\/p>\n
That mature career phase \u2014 along with the confidence to not worry whether the online commentariat is coming for her with hatchets \u2014 has also led to a kind of personal softening.<\/p>\n
\u201cI used to be a very fear-based person,\u201d Hathaway said. \u201cI used to have an overcharged electric-fence protection system, and I\u2019m not so interested in that anymore.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething happened when I turned 40 and I just realized I was living my life like it was a dress rehearsal,\u201d she added, \u201cand that actually, it was showtime.\u201d<\/p>\n
These are edited excerpts from the conversation, which can be watched here<\/a> or listened to in full below.<\/p>\n 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?<\/p>\n ANNE HATHAWAY It wound up being both. I had an instinct about the character that I had from the first read \u2014 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n HATHAWAY I got a text from Jack and he was like, \u201cHey, do you want to come in and get a vibe?\u201d I knew what a vibe was, but I was like, is this a technical term? Siri, what\u2019s a vibe?<\/p>\n Like, I\u2019d 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\u2019s so much projection involved. Pop music is the opposite. It\u2019s effortless power, which is not really my thing. I\u2019m, like, all about effort [laughs].<\/p>\n 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?<\/p>\n HATHAWAY Very much so, yeah. Pop wasn\u2019t 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\u2019s \u201cTRL\u201d 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.<\/p>\n COSCARELLI What kind of conversations were you having with the director David Lowery about the pop reference points for \u201cMother Mary?\u201d<\/p>\n HATHAWAY You meet David and he\u2019s so obviously goth: His nails are painted black and his T-shirt never doesn\u2019t 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 \u2014 I mean, obscure artists that I\u2019d never heard of, but then also Lorde\u2019s \u201cGreen Light,\u201d 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 \u201cAnti-Hero.\u201d I always really, really liked Taylor, but that was the song where I was like, oh no, wait, she\u2019s taking hold of my brain. And then I got much deeper into her music. And then once you see it, you can\u2019t unsee it. You\u2019re just like, Oh, she\u2019s a genius.<\/p>\n CARAMANICA Do you now have a preferred Taylor era?<\/p>\n HATHAWAY No, I think they all speak to each other. The \u201cEras\u201d era. To have a retrospective like that at the age that she is, and to realize that she had a vision that didn\u2019t exist in the world, and she literally made the space that she wanted for herself.<\/p>\n COSCARELLI How do we consider pop stars differently than we consider actors?<\/p>\n HATHAWAY When I finished [\u201cMother Mary\u201d] I was like, wow, I am so not a pop star. What I love to do is share what I\u2019ve gone through, the secret parts of my soul, through a filter, through an avatar that I can privately, secretly relate to. But I don\u2019t have to ever talk about that and I don\u2019t ever have to reveal that. With a pop star, the image that you\u2019re putting out is based on yourself. And so you are your own avatar.<\/p>\n COSCARELLI In your career, you\u2019ve 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\u2019t have a ton to project onto you when they\u2019re seeing you in these iconic roles.<\/p>\n HATHAWAY It\u2019s 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\u2019re still in a relationship together almost 30 years later. And that film was \u201cThe Princess Diaries.\u201d So I don\u2019t think of myself in iconic terms. I think about myself the way I\u2019ve always thought of myself, which is I\u2019m an actress. I\u2019ve been so lucky I\u2019ve been a part of these films that have offered people comfort for what now feels like it\u2019s going on generations. And I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n CARAMANICA I do see a couple of threads in the type of characters that you tend to be drawn to. You have \u201cPrincess Diaries\u201d and the original \u201cDevil Wears Prada\u201d \u2014 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, \u201cMother Mary,\u201d \u201cThe Intern\u201d \u2014 a very stitched together character who needs to learn to be unstitched, to find that softness or uncertainty within.<\/p>\n HATHAWAY When the first \u201cDevil Wears Prada” came out, it was so huge and I had that thing that happens where suddenly you\u2019re getting sent a bunch of scripts and you\u2019re like, oh, these are all the same character. I was 24 years old, I think, and I remember thinking to myself, that\u2019s 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\u2019re sort of the ersatz version of that, how am I gonna feel?<\/p>\n COSCARELLI You do \u201cBrokeback Mountain\u201d with Ang Lee, \u201cRachel Getting Married\u201d \u2026<\/p>\n HATHAWAY Jonathan Demme. And then, here\u2019s 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\u2019re like, it\u2019s probably time to do a \u201cValentine\u2019s Day.\u201d<\/p>\n COSCARELLI In coming back to these iconic characters with \u201cDevil Wears Prada 2\u201d and \u201cPrincess Diaries 3,\u201d which is in the works, did you have any reservations about playing the hits?<\/p>\n HATHAWAY I don\u2019t care anymore about that kind of stuff. I\u2019m 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\u2019m actually pretty delighted that somebody\u2019s asked me to come back and basically do the equivalent of a stadium tour.<\/p>\n COSCARELLI Your Eras tour!<\/p>\n HATHAWAY Because I went off and I did my weird thing, I appreciate, in a way that I couldn\u2019t have when I was so young, the artistry of the hits. There\u2019s a reason why they\u2019re beloved. They\u2019re really, really good. \u201cThe Devil Wears Prada\u201d is a wonderful movie.<\/p>\n COSCARELLI It\u2019s really hard to write \u201cAnti-Hero.\u201d<\/p>\n HATHAWAY It\u2019s really hard to write \u201cBlank Space,\u201d you know? And it shouldn\u2019t get dinged because we\u2019ve listened to it several thousand times.<\/p>\n COSCARELLI It\u2019s also coinciding with this amazing moment in your career arc, in which you\u2019re among the most beloved people on the internet.<\/p>\n HATHAWAY [maniacal laughter] Plot twist! [more maniacal laughter]<\/p>\n CARAMANICA The memes are in your favor.<\/p>\n HATHAWAY For now \u2026 We\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n CARAMANICA It can come for any of us.<\/p>\n HATHAWAY Oh, I know.<\/p>\n COSCARELLI Have you allowed yourself to feel the good side, having been on the other side of it at various moments?<\/p>\n HATHAWAY I don\u2019t know what<\/a> you\u2019re referring to<\/a> [laughs]. I\u2019m relieved that I don\u2019t have to deal with the bad side for now. But I do think that what both have taught me is that it\u2019s probably best to have a certain level of detachment from all of that.<\/p>\n COSCARELLI Do you like working at this speed \u2014 five movies this year, spanning centuries and vibes \u2014 or is it just, I gotta take them while they\u2019re coming?<\/p>\n 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\u2019t 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\u2019m just enjoying it because it\u2019s never gonna happen again.<\/p>\n Credits<\/p>\n Popcast is hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli and produced by Sophie Erickson and Kate LoPresti. This episode was filmed by Alfredo Chiarappa, Daniele Sarti, Jika Gonzalez and Pat Gunther. It was edited by Mark Zemel. Nick Pitman is our audio engineer and Amanda Webster is our photo editor. Brooke Minters is our executive producer.<\/p>\n Special thanks to Rebecca Blandon, Mahima Chablani, Dahlia Haddad, Mike Cordero, Chris Moore, Caterina Clerici, Nicole Huber, Zach Caldwell, Maddy Masiello, Brad Kimbrough, Andrew Wilcox, Caryn Ganz, Sia Michel, Nina Lassam, Solana Pyne and Sam Dolnick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After breaking big as a teenager with Disney\u2019s \u201cThe Princess Diaries,\u201d Anne Hathaway threaded a Hollywood needle. 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