She Won an Oscar—and Received Years of Backlash. Now She’s Finally Stopped Trying to Play Herself.
Posted by Slate
She Won an Oscar—and Received Years of Backlash. Now She’s Finally Stopped Trying to Play Herself.
Posted by Slate
7 Comments
Anne Hathaway has been famous around the world since she was a teenager. She won an Oscar at the age of 30. Yet today she seems perhaps a little underestimated. She’s a major movie star who rarely stars in a truly major movie, and seems unable to escape the now-13-year-old widespread consensus that there was something deeply hateful about her. Somehow, Hathaway’s “theater kid” energy—hardworking, ambitious, emotionally florid, and maybe a little calculating—was so irksome that after she won an Oscar in 2013, we needed to have a national conversation about it, with a whole coinage (“[Hathahaters](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/fashion/what-is-anne-hathaway-doing-wrong.html)”) to match. Everyone from [CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2013/02/28/showbiz/celebrity-news-gossip/anne-hathaway-hate) to [the Globe and Mail](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/celebrity-news/anne-hathaway-vs-jennifer-lawrence-why-we-hate-one-and-love-the-other/article9127123/) got in on the game, wondering why she couldn’t just be chill like Jennifer Lawrence, or why she seemed so fake, or why there was just something off-putting about her.
It’s almost as if Hathaway was born in the wrong era. Were she a child of the 1920s, her chameleonic approach to style, elevated elocution, and doe-eyed beauty could have been parlayed into a couple of decades of great studio pictures for audiences who didn’t expect stars to be just like them.
Read Isaac Butler’s full assessment of Anne Hathaway here (no paywall!): [https://slate.com/culture/2026/07/anne-hathaway-the-odyssey-movie-devil-wears-prada-penelope.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=annehathaway&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social–annehathaway](https://slate.com/culture/2026/07/anne-hathaway-the-odyssey-movie-devil-wears-prada-penelope.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=annehathaway&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social–annehathaway)
This is the first time I’ve ever heard of her having any kind of backlash for years? Where have I been?
Pretty sure I’ve enjoyed Anne in everything she does. She’s always a good contributor. She doesn’t have to be the brightest beacon to give a great performance.
What a pompous article.
Yo. The person who wrote this has it out for Anne. What did she do to you?? What am I missing.
I thought it was the way she came off that made her a bit unlikeable? Her performances have always been great, I never saw any doubt about that.
She crushed as fantine years ago in les mis. What a cool career. i dont understand the negativity.