Anne Jacqueline Hathaway (born November 12, 1982) is an American actress. The recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award, she was among the world's highest-paid actresses in 2015. Her films have grossed over $6.8 billion worldwide, and she appeared on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list in 2009.
Hathaway performed in several plays in high school. As a teenager, she was cast in the television series Get Real (1999–2000) and made her breakthrough by playing the lead role in the Disney comedy The Princess Diaries (2001). After starring in a string of family films, including Ella Enchanted (2004), Hathaway made a transition to adult roles with the 2005 drama Brokeback Mountain. The comedy-drama The Devil Wears Prada (2006), in which she played an assistant to a fashion magazine editor, was her biggest commercial success to that point. She played a recovering addict in the drama Rachel Getting Married (2008), which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Hathaway went on to star in several commercially successful films, including the comedy Get Smart (2008), the romances Bride Wars (2009), Valentine's Day (2010), and Love & Other Drugs (2010), and the fantasy film Alice in Wonderland (2010). In 2012, she starred as Catwoman in her highest-grossing film, The Dark Knight Rises, and played Fantine, a prostitute dying of tuberculosis, in the musical Les Misérables, winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She has since played a scientist in the science fiction film Interstellar (2014), the owner of an online fashion site in the comedy The Intern (2015), a haughty actress in the heist film Ocean's 8 (2018), a con artist in the comedy The Hustle (2019), and Rebekah Neumann in the miniseries WeCrashed (2022).
Hathaway has won a Primetime Emmy Award for her voice role in the sitcom The Simpsons, sung for soundtracks, appeared on stage, and hosted events. She supports several charitable causes. She is a board member of the Lollipop Theatre Network, an organization that brings films to children in hospitals, and advocates for gender equality as a UN Women goodwill ambassador. Hathaway is married to actor and businessman Adam Shulman and has two sons with him.
Early life and background :
Anne Jacqueline "Annie" Hathaway was born on November 12, 1982, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Her father, Gerald, is 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. Her mother is of Irish descent, and her father has Irish, French, English, and German ancestry. Hathaway was named after Shakespeare's wife. She is the second of three children, following brother Michael and preceding brother Thomas. When she was six, her family moved to Millburn, New Jersey, where she was raised.
Entrance to the theater Paper Mill Playhouse with the poster to a play outside it
Paper Mill Playhouse where Hathaway appeared in several productions as a child
At age eight, when Hathaway watched her mother perform in the first national tour of Les Misérables as Fantine, she instantly became fascinated with the stage, but 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 considers to be "really strong values" and stated that she wished to be a nun during her childhood, but acting was always a high priority for her. Her relationship with the Catholic Church changed at age 15, after learning that her older brother, Michael, was gay. Her family left the church, converting to Episcopalianism because of its acceptance of homosexuality, but eventually left that too. In 2009, Hathaway described her religious beliefs as "a work in progress".
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.Later, she appeared in other plays like 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.
Between 1998 and 1999, Hathaway sang soprano with the All-Eastern U.S. High School Honors Chorus at Carnegie Hall and in plays at Seton Hall Preparatory School in West Orange, New Jersey. At the start of her film career, her acting style and appearance were compared to Judy Garland—whom she cites as one of her favorite actresses —and Audrey Hepburn. Three days after her performance at Carnegie Hall, Hathaway was cast in the short-lived Fox television series Get Real. She played the teenager Meghan Green alongside Jon Tenney, Debrah Farentino and Jesse Eisenberg. Despite her early success, Hathaway suffered from depression and anxiety as a teenager; she said in 2008 she had since grown from it. She missed her first college semester for the filming of her cinematic debut The Princess Diaries (2001). She says she never regretted not finishing her degree, as she enjoyed being with others who "were trying to grow up".
