Anne Hathaway arrived in Hollywood as a fairy-tale ingenue and spent the following two decades methodically complicating that image into something far more interesting and durable. She broke through with The Princess Diaries (2001) and went on to a career that includes Brokeback Mountain (2005), The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Rachel Getting Married (2008), and Les Misérables (2012), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her ability to hold her own against Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada at twenty-three, and then disappear entirely into the raw damage of Fantine a few years later, mapped a range that the industry took longer than it should have to fully trust.

On screen, Hathaway commands with a theatrical precision that suits period material and high-gloss comedy in equal measure, and the best roles she has taken ask her to hold genuine vulnerability underneath a polished surface until the surface cracks. The large dark eyes, the face that shifts from radiant to wrecked with startling speed, and a voice she has deployed as a dramatic instrument across musicals, drama, and science fiction give her a screen presence of considerable technical sophistication. She is currently at the point in her career where the audience has caught up to what she was always capable of, and the material arriving at her door reflects it.