From ‘The Idea of You’ to ‘Verity,’ Anne Hathaway Is On One Heck of a Heater

It’s no exaggeration to say Anne Hathaway is on a heater right now — and that’s not just because she’s mashing face with Dakota Johnson in steamy new Colleen Hoover adaptation Verity.

The superstar actor’s post-pandemic resume is extraordinary, a well-balanced career resurgence notable for its strong creative choices and big box office hits. After emerging as a bankable star in the 2000s with The Princess Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada, she earned an Oscar nod for Rachel Getting Married — perhaps still her best work — and took home the award for Les Miserables. But the post-Oscar-win slump was real for her; take Interstellar out of the equation, and her mid-to-late-2010s run is full of clunkers like The Hustle and Serenity, or weirdnesses a la Colossal. Hey, remember Colossal? I’d be shocked if you did.

But recently? Her career is a fully fueled flamethrower. Verity — Hathaway’s fifth movie of 2026! — trounced Tom Cruise’s Digger at the box office. (Speaking of which, we’re all stoked to see her opposite Cruise in 2028’s as-yet-untitled Days of Thunder sequel!) But we’re here today to remind you that she’s been in seven bangers in the past five years — and you can watch all of them now…

Photo: Everett Collection
Hathaway makes the most of a supporting role as a head-of-the-PTA mom, making a memorable turn out of what might be a thankless, throwaway part, because that’s what you do when you’re in a James Gray movie. (It helps that Gray doesn’t write thankless, throwaway parts.) She plays the supportive parent in a volatile family with Jewish roots in 1980 Queens, New York — and the fact that she’s worth mentioning among bigger and/or showier roles by Anthony Hopkins, Banks Repeta, and Jeremy Strong is evidence of her creative reemergence.
Where to stream Armageddon Time
Eileen
Photo: Everett Collection
Our lady shoots a single look across a busy room and instantly changes the tenor of the scene. Thomasin McKenzie anchors this Hitchcocky psychodrama, playing a put-upon prison employee enamored by Hathaway’s newly hired prison shrink. Hathaway plays the shrewdest and smartest femme fatale type in recent memory, her eyes lasering through the lens and scarring the wall behind us because we ducked. Few people saw this; don’t be among them.
Where to stream Eileen
Courtesy of Prime
This is an oh god no thank you premise that Hathaway spins into an endearing, steamy, smarter-than-average rom-com. She’s a middle-aged (yes, the Princess of Genovia is in her 40s now, because time just effing works that way) single mother of a teenager who happens into a don’t-call-it-May-December/more-like-April-September romance with a young-20s hunk in a mega-selling boy band. Her chemistry with co-star Nicholas Galitzine is terrific (he shows real star power), the on-screen relationship is more complex and sophisticated than you expect (primarily Hathaway’s doing, considering her refusal to indulge rom-com stereotypes) and the sex scenes had us opening up the ice bin and taking a seat (we have the bottom-drawer freezer, thankfully). This silliness is way better than it should be, and it’s all Hathaway’s fault.
Where to stream The Idea of You
Photo: Everett Collection
This working-with-a-hell-of-a-director thing results in a big, big swing as Hathaway plays a pop-music superstar desperately reuniting with her ex-costume designer in this occasionally outright-insane David Lowery film. Some will write off this dreamy-surreal two-hander — Hathaway’s countered by an equally inspired Michaela Coel — as pretentious twaddle, and I can see that. But Haths goes darker, more intense, and more tortured than ever before, and the argument can be made that she’s rarely been better.
Where to stream Mother Mary
Photo: ©Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection
Admittedly, this isn’t the most demanding fodder for Hathsies, but she’s excellent at doing what this overstuffed screenplay asks of her: holding it all together. She weaves her way through a tangle of plots and characters like a tour guide who knows the route by heart, and is as endearing as ever as the plucky go-getter who has to go-get when the stakes are much higher than ever before. Oh, and this sequel doesn’t gross $693 million worldwide — or exist at all — without Hathaway.
Where to stream The Devil Wears Prada 2
Photo: Everett Collection
Guess who grounds this dinosaurs-run-amok action-horror-comedy with a sharp, emotionally resonant performance? Right. Hathaway and co-star Ewan McGregor play a couple that’s this close to calling divorce lawyers when whoopsie, their entire neighborhood finds itself vworped into prehistoric times. (I hate it when that happens!) Her character communicates some rather complex feelings about being stuck in a disintegrating marriage while she more than ably shoulders a shotgun in an attempt to save her hubs from getting chomped in half. And to see Hathaway just Go For It with a knife against a giant snake? She does it all here, in resonant and entertaining fashion.
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As Penelope, long-suffering wife of Odysseus and fender-offer of a million-zillion skeevy suitors, Hathaway is fiery as all hell, delivering boiling-hot soliloquies with the flinty authority she hadn’t previously deployed. Her performance is huge-bordering-on-towering, and manages to stand out amid the melee of a three-hour IMAXified Christopher Nolan uber-epic that’s pretty much the beginning and end of all stories ever. So her work here is nothing to sneeze at, not at all. My nickel’s on another Oscar nom.
Where to stream The Odyssey