Anne Hathaway’s Remarkable Five-Film Tour de Force Showcases a Movie Star at Full Power

Anne Hathaway has had one hell of a year. After appearing in five movies since April, she now belongs to the Five-In-One-Year Club, informally established by Ben Stiller and Jude Law in 2004 when they each starred in five films (not counting cameos and voiceovers). Box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian marvels at Hathaway’s genre-hopping hot streak, encompassing Mother Mary, The Devil Wears Prada 2, The Odyssey, The End of Oak Street and October’s Verity. “Clearly, filmmakers love working with Anne Hathaway,” said Dergarabedian, Head of Marketplace Trends for Rentrak. “Given the wide range of genres, it’s been an incredible showcase for her versatility. And what’s particularly remarkable is that three of Anne’s films were part of the record-breaking summer of 2026. This is her year.”

Anne Hathaway is having an MVP year at the box office. Give her agent and team a raise. Five films, five very different movies, and she keeps delivering for theaters, studios and, most importantly, moviegoers. 🎬#MotherMary @A24#TheDevilWearsPrada 2 @20thcentury#TheOdyssey… pic.twitter.com/7BMDI1Lm1m

— Paul Dergarabedian (@PDergarabedian) September 30, 2026

To be clear, it’s not as if Hathaway made five movies in a single year—she started filming the April release Mother Mary back in 2023—but a perfect storm of production hiccups, lengthy post-production work, and marketing strategies converged with her rigorous work ethic to deliver a cornucopia of vivid Hathaway performances.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna isn’t surprised by Hathaway’s current reign as the busiest actress of the early-2000s vintage. “Annie has an unbelievable face for the movie screen with these big expressive eyes,” McKenna told The Credits. “She’s highly intelligent, very intuitive and hilariously funny, so she can do the most intense drama, then turn around and do the silliest physical comedy. And she’s extremely prepared. I feel like Annie would be a big movie star in any era.”

The quantity, quality, and variety of Hathaway’s big-screen handiwork over the past few months represent the latest peak in an unusually durable career. A bright theater kid from New Jersey who became obsessed with Greek mythology in eighth grade, Hathaway enjoyed her first hit in 2001 at age 19 when she charmed audiences with the top-twenty blockbuster The Princess Diaries. She later went dark in Rachel Getting Married, followed by roles in prestige projects like The Dark Knight Rises and Les Misérables. 

Here’s a look at this year’s Hathaway deluge, detailing how the actress navigated wildly different films while bringing a steely, core charisma to every performance that defines her singular movie-star persona, no matter the role.

Psychological Thriller’s Catatonic Mystery Woman

Verity (October 2) reunited Hathaway with director Michael Showalter, who steered her re-entry into filmdom in 2024 with the chatty romcom The Idea of You. This time, it’s all about what Hathaway doesn’t say. SPOILER ALERT. She plays the secretive, best-selling author Verity Crawford, who’s become bedridden and seemingly catatonic following a brutal car accident. The role demands an all-gravitas, all-the-time performance from Hathaway, whose eyes speak intimidating volumes opposite Dakota Johnson as the younger writer conscripted by Verity’s husband (Josh Hartnett) to finish her unfinished novel.

Filming for Verity took place mainly at Broadway Stages in the Glendale neighborhood of Queens between February and April 2025.

Sci-fi Horror Alpha Female

The End of Oak Street (August 14) counts on Hathaway to ground its fantastical dinosaurs-in-suburbia premise as Denise, an 80s-era homemaker and closet novelist with nerves of steel and a scream that could melt Teflon. Her bewildered kids and unemployed husband (Ewan McGregor) wouldn’t stand a chance without her shotgun-wielding leadership. Writer/director David Robert Mitchell’s naturalistic domestic scenes fall easily into Hathaway’s wheelhouse, but she also excels at selling the terror of watching dinosaurs slaughter her neighbors when, in on-set reality, she’s actually looking at grey-suited stunt performers in dinosaur masks.

The End of Oak Street was filmed mainly in Georgia in the spring of 2024.

Ancient Wife in Oscar-Bound Epic

Hathaway elevates what could have been a thankless role as Penelope, the faithful wife awaiting the return of her warrior husband Odysseus (Matt Damon), into an Oscar-contending portrait of a woman every bit as steely (and far less self-involved) as her husband. Bolstered by writer/director Chris Nolan’s script, Hathaway’s Penelope shrewdly fends off sleazy suitors (including Robert Pattinson’s Antinous) while upbraiding son Telemachus (Tom Holland) to step up his game. Nolan earlier picked Hathaway to play a formidable, no-bullsh*t Catwoman opposite Christian Bale’s Batman in The Dark Knight Rises, then cast her as brainy astrophysicist Amelia Brand in Interstellar. The director said in a statement, “I’ve worked with Anne twice before and knew I needed her incredible ability to…bring out the tension between Penelope’s controlled exterior and the intense emotions underneath. Penelope is controlled and strategic on the surface, navigating the dangerous politics of Ithaca with apparent calm, but Anne is able to convey all the passion Penelope has to hide.” In addition to navigating her character’s intensely controlled temperament, Hathaway faced a technical challenge posed by the noisy IMAX cameras that filmed her scenes with Holland, Pattinson and Damon. To hush the IMAX cameras’ lawnmower-loud rumble, the crew built a custom “blimp” to dampen the sound. That, however, created a fresh problem: the cameras were so bulky that Hathaway and her screen partners in the more intimate scenes couldn’t see each other. So, Hathaway had to emote to a mirror reflection of her scene partner’s face. 

Overseas production on The Odyssey started in February 2025 and wrapped in August.

Endlessly Clever in a Frothy Fashion Satire

The Devil Wears Prada 2 (May 1) revisits Hathaway’s character Andie, who somehow looks only slightly older than she did in the first Devil back in 2006. In this breezy tale of high-fashion misadventures, Hathaway delivers a deceptively multifaceted performance opposite Meryl Streep’s still-imperious Anna Wintour-like nemesis and her prickly rival (Emily Blunt). Along the way, Hathaway/Andie has to look great in designer gowns, feel believable as a serious reporter who’s just won a public service journalism award, warm up romantically to a handsome real estate broker, and outsmart a Jeff Bezos-like media mogul.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 was filmed in New York and Italy over the summer of 2025.

Moody Pop Star in a Dark Two-Hander

Mother Mary (April 17) reminds viewers of two things. One: Hathaway can brood with the best of them, as she earlier proved in her Oscar-nominated turn as a bitter ex-addict in Rachel Getting Married. Two: the girl can sing. But where Hathaway’s Oscar-winning “Fantine” in Les Misérables pulled heartstrings by belting out I Dreamed a Dream, she dares to be unsympathetic here as a depressed pop diva known to her adoring fans as Mother Mary. Burrowing into the Lady Gaga-like persona with characteristic commitment, Hathaway ingested a playlist of songs provided by writer/director David Lowrey, spent months “locked inside a dance studio” learning how to move on stage and co-wrote the anthemic “Burial” with real-life pop star Charlie XCX and Taylor Swift collaborator and producer Jack Antonoff. “I felt like a pop star sponge,” Hathaway said in a video. “Before I learned the lines, I had to learn how to dance.”

Lowery enlisted BAFTA-winning British actress Michaela Coel to portray the estranged stylist/friend summoned by Mother Mary to provide her with a new dress and unexpectedly tough love.

The cast and crew began working on Mother Mary in May 2023 in Germany. Strikes halted production, which was eventually completed in July 2024.

Five films in a calendar year don’t happen by force of will alone, but they also don’t happen by accident. Hathaway has the talent; she proved that years ago, but she also has the work ethic and the bedside manner that make her one of the most sought-after performers in the world.