ANNE HATHAWAY: One of the Best!
- Nick Digilio
- May 5
- 7 min read
Anne Hathaway is one of those actresses I will defend forever. I am an unapologetic, enthusiastic, full-on Anne Hathaway fan, and I have been from the beginning.
She has been working now for over 25 years, which is insane because I still think of her as the fresh-faced kid from The Princess Diaries, even though she is now an Oscar-winning, hugely successful, incredibly versatile actress who has basically done every kind of movie you can do.
Anne Jacqueline Hathaway, born November 12, 1982, in Brooklyn, raised in New Jersey, daughter of a lawyer and a former actress, named after Shakespeare’s wife, which is already a pretty great theatrical origin story.
She did plays in high school, sang soprano, performed at Carnegie Hall, studied acting, did theater, and then almost immediately landed on television in Get Real.
And then, right out of the gate, her first major movie role is The Princess Diaries, where she has to hold the screen opposite Julie Andrews (Julie Andrews!) and she does it. She’s charming, funny, awkward, lovely, completely winning. That movie made her a star instantly.
And for a while, that was the image: wholesome Anne Hathaway. Disney Anne Hathaway. Family movie Anne Hathaway. Nicholas Nickleby, Ella Enchanted, The Princess Diaries 2. And she was terrific in all of that stuff. She had this big, vibrant, open personality, and people loved her.
Then she says, okay, enough of that, and does Havoc. Suddenly she’s in this very dark, very adult, very R-rated movie with sex, drugs, violence, nudity...all the stuff that made people go, “Wait, Princess Mia is doing what now?”
And then the same year she does Brokeback Mountain, and that’s when people really start taking her seriously. Because she’s very good in that movie. Really good. She finds this whole other register.
That’s what I love about her. She can do anything.
Comedy? She’s terrific. The Devil Wears Prada is a great movie, and she more than holds her own with Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt. Drama? Rachel Getting Married is remarkable.
Science fiction? She’s wonderful in Interstellar, which remains one of the very few Christopher Nolan movies that I actually like. Superhero stuff? She’s one of the few things I like in The Dark Knight Rises.
Musicals? She wins the Oscar for Les Misérables, a movie I do not like (I actually think it’s pretty terrible) but she gives it everything. They gave her the Oscar for the wrong movie, but I’m still glad she has one.
She’s done voice work, romantic comedies, blockbusters, weird independent films, thrillers, musicals, costume dramas, everything. She is also a killer host on Saturday Night Live!
She’s been in junk too, because of course she has.
Bride Wars, Valentine’s Day, The Hustle, some of that stuff is forgettable or just plain bad, but she is almost always the best thing in it. That’s the Anne Hathaway thing. Even when the movie doesn’t work, she does.
And I think she’s underrated. I really do. Which sounds ridiculous because she’s famous, she’s won major awards, her movies have made billions of dollars, but I still don’t think people fully acknowledge her range.
They get hung up on the “Anne Hathaway” of it all, you know, the interviews, the earnestness, the fact that some people think she’s too polished or too precious. I don’t buy that. I find her charming. I think she’s talented as hell, and I like that she takes chances.
Look at Colossal, which is my favorite performance of hers. That movie is nuts. She plays an alcoholic who goes back to her hometown and discovers that when she walks through a playground, she is somehow connected to a giant kaiju monster destroying Seoul, Korea.
That sounds ridiculous, and it is, but it’s also brilliant. It’s a monster movie, a dark comedy, and one of the best movies ever made about alcoholism. As a recovering alcoholic myself, I connected with that movie deeply.
The monster is a metaphor, and Hathaway understands that completely. It’s funny, painful, weird, sad, and incredibly specific. It’s her best work.
And now here we are in 2026, which is basically turning into the year of Anne Hathaway. She’s got five films coming out, and two are already here: The Devil Wears Prada 2, a big, glossy, crowd-pleasing sequel with Meryl Streep, and Mother Mary, this weird, experimental, musical ghost-story love film where she gives a completely different kind of performance.
That’s what she does. She can go from mainstream studio sequel to strange art-film risk-taking in the same couple of weeks. That’s why I love her.
She’s smart, she’s funny, she’s beautiful, she’s adventurous, she’s willing to look foolish, she’s willing to go dark, and she keeps growing. She could have stayed in one lane forever, but she didn’t. She pushed herself. She still does.
So in honor of 2026 being a huge year for Anne Hathaway, I’ve put together my 10 favorite Anne Hathaway performances in films. These are the ones that, for me, show what she can really do: the range, the charm, the weirdness, the emotional depth, the comedy, the risk-taking.
Here are my 10 favorite Anne Hathaway performances, in order of preference.
THE 10 BEST ANNE HATHAWAY PERFORMANCES (in order of preference):
This is it. This is the one. Her best performance, period. And it’s in a movie that a lot of people still haven’t seen, which is crazy to me because it’s such a wild, original, completely bonkers concept. She plays this alcoholic, kind of lost, self-destructive woman who goes back to her hometown and discovers she’s psychically connected to a giant monster in Seoul.
I mean…what? But it works. And Hathaway is unbelievable in it. She’s funny, she’s heartbreaking, she’s ugly in all the right ways, and she absolutely nails the metaphor of addiction. As someone who’s been through that, I can tell you, it’s dead-on. It’s a kaiju movie, a character study, a dark comedy, and one of the smartest films about alcoholism ever made. And she carries the whole thing.
This is the performance that should’ve won her the Oscar. Raw, messy, uncomfortable, completely fearless. She plays a recovering addict coming home for her sister’s wedding, and she is just a tornado of narcissism, guilt, pain, and desperation.
Jonathan Demme lets the camera just sit on her, and she goes for it, there is no vanity, no safety net. It’s one of those performances where you feel like you’re watching something almost too personal. She’s not trying to be likable, and that’s what makes it so great. It’s brutal and honest and just phenomenal work.
This is one of those later-career performances where you go, “Oh yeah, she’s still taking chances.” She’s weird in this. Really weird. Mysterious, seductive, a little unhinged, maybe dangerous, you’re never quite sure what she’s up to.
It’s a controlled, stylized performance that could have gone completely off the rails, but she keeps it grounded just enough. It’s icy and unpredictable and kind of mesmerizing. It feels like a role tailor-made for her to show a different side, and she absolutely leans into it.
Talk about range. You go from something like The Devil Wears Prada 2 to this, which is this strange, experimental, musical, emotional fever dream of a movie. And Hathaway dives in headfirst. This is a layered, odd, very specific performance that doesn’t play by normal rules. She’s not trying to be accessible here, she’s trying to be interesting, and she is.
It’s one of those performances where you can see her stretching, taking risks, doing something that might alienate some people but is going to fascinate others. I love that she still does stuff like this. And her solo dance number (without music) is one of the best things she has ever done.
This is the movie that made her a full-on movie star. She’s the audience surrogate, the entry point into this insane, heightened world of fashion, and she grounds it beautifully. What’s great about her performance is that she evolves.
You see the ambition creep in, the compromises, the transformation. And she holds her own with Meryl Streep, which is no small feat. She’s funny, relatable, charming, and smart. It’s just a really, really solid, star-making performance.
This is where people started going, “Oh, she’s not just the princess girl.” Her role isn’t huge, but it’s crucial, and she makes the most of every second she’s on screen. You watch her character go from this bright, hopeful young woman to someone hardened and disappointed, and she charts that progression beautifully. It’s subtle work, but really effective, and it showed early on that she had serious dramatic chops.
You never forget your first, and this is one of the great star-making debuts. She’s so natural in this, and awkward, funny, and completely endearing. It’s a tough role because she has to carry the whole movie, go through that big transformation, and make you believe it, all while acting opposite Julie Andrews. And she does it. She’s got that sparkle right from the beginning. You watch this now, and you can see the career starting in real time.
This was the shocker. This was the one where people went, “Wait, what is she doing?” because it completely shattered her wholesome image. The movie itself is a mess, but she is fearless in it.
She goes dark, she goes raw, she goes uncomfortable, and she commits. It’s not a polished performance, but that’s kind of the point. It was a statement...she was not going to be typecast, and she was willing to take risks to prove it.
I love this movie, and she’s a big part of why it works emotionally. In a film that’s dealing with massive, cosmic ideas, she brings it back to something human. There’s warmth, intelligence, vulnerability, especially in the way her character balances logic and emotion.
She gives the movie a heart that it really needs. It’s one of her more understated performances, but it’s essential to the film’s impact.
This is one of those performances that reminds you how good she is at romantic comedy when the material actually works. She’s charming, funny, sexy, a little vulnerable. This is a full, adult performance about love, aging, and perception.
There’s an ease to her here, a confidence that comes with experience. It’s not flashy, but it’s incredibly likable and real, and she carries the movie with that star power she’s had since day one.
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