Twenty-five years, one Oscar, and a 2026 that has her playing Penelope for Christopher Nolan. Here’s where every great Hathaway performance lands.
A cowgirl married to a man with a secret. A newly sober addict wrecking her sister’s wedding. A princess who has no idea she’s a princess. Anne Hathaway has spent more than 25 years refusing to settle into a lane, and she’s still one of the most adaptable leading women working.
With the Oscar winner rejoining Christopher Nolan as Penelope in “The Odyssey” — the biggest title in a 2026 that also includes “The Devil Wears Prada 2” — Variety is ranking her strongest film work to date.
How she got here
Born in Brooklyn, raised in New Jersey, Hathaway landed almost immediately. After a short run in the ensemble of the Fox family drama “Get Real,” 2001 changed everything: as Mia Thermopolis, unwitting heir to the throne of Genovia in Garry Marshall’s “The Princess Diaries,” she went toe to toe with Julie Andrews and won the room. The film took more than $160 million worldwide and produced a 2004 sequel, “The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement,” with Andrews and Marshall both back.
From there she scattered in every direction: Madeline Bray in the Dickens adaptation “Nicholas Nickleby” (2002), the title role in “Ella Enchanted” (2004), then Lureen Newsome in Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain” (2005), which told the industry she had range beyond rom-com charm. “The Devil Wears Prada” (2006) followed, a hit with critics and audiences, and then “Get Smart” (2008) sharpened her comic timing opposite Steve Carell.
The same year brought the performance that changed how actors saw her: a drug addict just out of rehab in “Rachel Getting Married.” Jonathan Demme’s drama earned her a first Oscar nomination, for best actress. Four years later she was Fantine in Tom Hooper’s “Les Misérables” (2012), squeezing everything out of limited screen time opposite Hugh Jackman and delivering “I Dreamed a Dream” in a single take that won her the supporting actress Oscar.
Since then: the blockbuster scale of “Interstellar” (2014), the heist comedy “Ocean’s Eight” (2018), the A24 thriller “Eileen” (2023), and the romance “The Idea of You” (2024), one of Amazon’s most-watched originals. Now she’s in the busiest stretch of her career, peaking with the Nolan reunion.
Honorable mentions: “The Devil Wears Prada 2” (2026), “Interstellar” (2014), “The Intern” (2015), “Eileen” (2023), “The Idea of You” (2024).
13. ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ (2002)
The scene that proves it: “Every good thing has been a trick until you.”
Working in a British accent, Hathaway keeps pace with an ensemble that includes Charlie Hunnam, Jim Broadbent and Jamie Bell. A year after “The Princess Diaries,” she takes all the air in every scene she’s in and gives it back as Douglas McGrath’s romantic dialogue. An early sign of how quickly she can locate the feeling underneath a character.
12. ‘Colossal’ (2016)
The scene that proves it: Raising her arms at the playground.
Strange enough that it shouldn’t work, and it does. Hathaway plays Gloria, an unemployed alcoholic writer who somehow conjures a giant creature in Seoul, and it’s quietly one of her best performances. The film sits somewhere between “Lost in Translation” and “Ex Machina,” and like most good acting in science fiction, it went underappreciated. You don’t need $100 million of effects. You need a smart script and someone who can make lifting her arms in a playground look monumental.
11. ‘Ella Enchanted’ (2004)
The scene that proves it: “Somebody to love.”
As the lead, Hathaway supplies enough playful energy to keep Tommy O’Haver’s family film alive for the parents in the room. Her chemistry with Hugh Dancy is genuinely good, and she nudges Ella toward something snarkier and more mischievous than the material required.
10. ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ (2012)
The scene that proves it: “Oops.”
Fans have never fully forgiven the Nolan trilogy for adding Selina Kyle, especially following the 2008 film that won Heath Ledger a posthumous Oscar. But even when Hathaway is arguably miscast, she does the job properly. A single sultry zinger aimed at Christian Bale, a perfectly composed perch on the Bat-Cycle: her action work almost never lets her down.
9. ‘Ocean’s Eight’ (2018)
The scene that proves it: “Hi Daph, welcome to the team… let’s not all high-five at once.”
Variety’s Matt Donnelly calls this her best work, and on his recommendation it was the last film I rewatched before locking the original version of this list in 2022. It doesn’t quite reach the top for me, but it’s her cleanest move into full-throttle comic villainy. In a cast that also includes Cate Blanchett, Rihanna and Sarah Paulson, she’s the standout, never more than in that welcome-to-the-team beat.
8. ‘Love and Other Drugs’ (2010)
The scene that proves it: “Actually, this me being nice.”
Edward Zwick’s film about two people tangled up in the pharmaceutical business, and in each other, doesn’t entirely hold together. What does hold is the chemistry between Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal, and she gives everything to a tender performance as a woman living with Parkinson’s disease. She was nominated for a Golden Globe in the comedy or musical category, which undersells how serious the work is.
7. ‘Brokeback Mountain’ (2005)
The scene that proves it: “Get in touch with his folks…”
I’ll admit that when Ang Lee’s film first came out, Hathaway’s role didn’t land for me next to what her co-stars were doing. Time has corrected that. Her first meeting with Gyllenhaal’s Jack Twist after the rodeo, and her devastating final phone call with Ledger’s Ennis, are what make the scale of Jack and Ennis’ love legible. Lureen carries more of that film than she gets credit for.
6. ‘Get Smart’ (2008)
The scene that proves it: “That was my last mile…”
Hathaway and Steve Carell have real chemistry in this adaptation of the old television series, which plays closer to “Naked Gun” spoof than straight action. She refuses to sit in the passenger seat as Agent 99, building the role on competence and strength, which is exactly the right counterweight to Carell’s hapless Maxwell Smart. By the end she’s the one saving the day.
5. ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ (2006)
The scene that proves it: Getting a makeover.
Most of the credit goes to Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly and Emily Blunt’s Emily, which shouldn’t erase what Hathaway does in David Frankel’s comedy, including some lovely work opposite Stanley Tucci. Her line readings are precisely calibrated, and she never gets overpowered by the heavyweights around her. Her return in this year’s “The Devil Wears Prada 2” is overdue.
4. ‘The Odyssey’ (2026)
The scene that proves it: The reunion.
Her third film with Nolan, after “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Interstellar,” casts her as Penelope, the queen of Ithaca keeping both her kingdom and her marriage upright through two decades of her husband’s absence. The performance runs on restraint, and much of the praise has centered on the quiet steadiness of the Ithaca material and the homecoming that closes the film. Surrounded by Matt Damon, Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson in a full sword-and-sandal epic, she still finds room to register.
3. ‘The Princess Diaries’ (2001)
The scene that proves it: “Me? A princess?”
Loaded with comic beats and quotable lines, and impossible to forget as an introduction. The film has become a cult favorite well beyond its original audience, largely because Hathaway plants her feet and holds her ground against Julie Andrews in what is essentially a Cinderella story.
2. ‘Les Misérables’ (2012)
The scene that proves it: “I Dreamed a Dream.”
In a cast that includes Hugh Jackman, Amanda Seyfried and Eddie Redmayne, Hathaway’s Fantine took her somewhere new. The supporting actress Oscar was entirely earned, and the rendition of the character’s signature song is why. Listen to how she bites down on the last note of “dream.”
1. ‘Rachel Getting Married’ (2008)
The scene that proves it: “Did I sacrifice every bit of love in this life because I killed our little brother?”
Jonathan Demme’s drama is unbearably close-up, and Hathaway is completely tuned to what Kym is carrying. Years after killing her younger brother in a crash as a teenager, she moves from grief to manipulation to charm and back, sometimes inside a single scene, all of it drawing on the same bottomless well of feeling. The performance brought an Oscar nomination and a run of other awards attention, and it remains the clearest evidence of what she can do.