For the past two decades, Anne Hathaway has been a regular and welcome presence in cinephiles’ lives. She shed the wide-eyed sheen of the two Princess Diaries movies to take on more adult roles, like her heartbreaking turn in Brokeback Mountain or the much-loved The Devil Wears Prada, to become a dependable and instantly recognisable representation of ‘big movies’.
Public opinion viciously turned on Hathaway in the early 2010s. Essentially, people saw her as “too perfect”, especially when she won her Oscar for Les Misérables. Her acceptance speech was viewed as “rehearsed” and “inauthentic”, which just amplified the ‘Hatha-hate’ she was already receiving online. Speaking with Vanity Fair, Hathaway recalled that tough period in her life, saying, “This was a language I had employed with myself since I was seven. And when your self-inflicted pain is suddenly somehow amplified back at you at, say, the full volume of the internet…. It’s a thing.”
Mercifully, the One Day star got through this rough patch, thanks in part to her collaborations with Christopher Nolan. Hathaway joined the director’s Batman trilogy for The Dark Knight Rises, where she played an updated version of Selena Kyle’s Catwoman. Then came the pair’s most significant achievement – Interstellar. Hathaway dazzled as Dr Amelia Brand, a scientist on a deep space voyage to find a suitable replacement for planet Earth. Considering how often Nolan’s female parts can be one-note, Brand is a complex character, torn between her scientific duties and her love for her former colleague and lost coloniser, Dr Edmunds.
When speaking specifically about Interstellar, Hathaway doubted if Nolan “knew that he was backing me at the time” by casting her in such a prestigious role. “But it had that effect,” she continued. “And my career did not lose momentum the way it could have if he hadn’t backed me.”
Even after the success of Interstellar, Hathaway’s career wasn’t perfect. She had success with the likes of The Intern and Colossal but wasn’t averse to starring in stinkers like The Hustle or Robert Zemeckis’ remake of The Witches. Even Serenity, which reunited her with former co-astronaut Matthew McConaughey, was a total and utter flop. That wasn’t the point, though. Having two more beloved roles under her belt added to Hathaway’s legend and helped protect her against any future bad decisions. The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar were such big ticks in her ‘Pros’ column that they cancelled out several of the minor ‘Cons’ she would accumulate in later years. They established Hathaway as one of the untouchables, a position she occupied ever since.
