Imagine being twenty-five years into your career as an actor: you’re still booked and busy with five movie premieres in one single year. You are a respected artist and childhood icon to an entire generation. All while Emily Blunt and Dakota Johnson are both claiming the paternity of your unborn child. Sounds good, right? Well, Anne Hathaway doesn’t have to imagine.
Let us briefly recap her year.
She began this generational run in April with Mother Mary (2026), a beautifully shot psychological drama with a costume department that deserves all the awards ever. A month later, she brought Andy Sachs back to our screens for the 20th anniversary of The Devil Wears Prada (2026). Now, normally I wouldn’t encourage Hollywood’s worrying lack of original ideas by praising yet another sequel to a 2000s film, but we all have our weak spots, and Miranda Priestly is mine. Sue me. In July, The Odyssey (2026) hit theatres and received as many accolades as it did criticisms. Mixed reviews and all, it is now the eleventh highest-grossing film of all time. Also, try being Anne Hathaway with a script for a starring role in a Christopher Nolan film on one hand and an excuse to hang around Zendaya on the other. Personally, I know what I would do.
However, this box office success overshadowed Hathaway’s fourth project five months later, The End of Oak Street (2026). From Ancient Greece we arrive in your typical American neighbourhood in the 80s, except there are…dinosaurs? A truly ground- trembling switch. Most recently, this October, Verity (2026) came to the big screen starring (you guessed it) Anne Hathaway along with Dakota Johnson. A movie that benefits from a well-chosen cast, even though the world has long surpassed the need for more Colleen Hoover film adaptations, if there ever was such a need. And, of course, Hathaway’s chemistry with Johnson makes any movie worth watching.
Five back-to-back projects equals a never-ending press tour. An ever-flowing source of content that’s great for the viewer, although perhaps not ideal for the pregnant woman who has to be in full glam 24/7. Still, this isn’t her first pregnancy, and she has often shifted the focus away from her and towards women with jobs much less forgiving than hers. In a 2017 speech, she noted the “luxury of taking time off” after having a baby, which most women don’t experience. Anne Hathaway has plenty to be grateful for this year, both personally and professionally. 2027 has even more in store for the Oscar-winning actress. As she turns a new page into motherhood, she will be turning one as well in her career: Alone at Dawn (2027) is set to release next year, a film adaptation of John A. Chapman’s non-fiction book of the same title. If this year has proven anything, it’s that there’s Hathaway for days.
Photo by Harald Krichel on Openverse.
