Anne Hathaways Stunning Comeback: Oscar Buzz Ahead!

It's been 25 years since burst onto the showbiz scene with The Princess Diaries. 

Just 18 years old at the time, Anne couldn't have predicted the success that lay ahead of her, with the actress going on to earn an Oscar, become one of Hollywood's best paid actresses, and boast a movie collection that's grossed $6.8 billion worldwide.

Yet with the dizzying highs of fame came the crushing lows, and in the early 2010s Anne suffered from a wave of online hate so vitriolic that it spawned the name 'Hatha-hate', resulting in her . 

The Hollywood star became the subject of vile and toxic trolling, with the actress dubbed 'fake', 'theatrical' and winning the title of The Most Annoying Celebrity of 2013, according to a poll by The San Francisco Chronicle.

Even her Oscar win for Les Miserables in 2013 couldn't save her, with the opening line of her acceptance speech – 'it came true' – going viral after viewers branded her 'pretentious' 

Now, however, things couldn't look more different for Anne, who is this summer's box office queen after lining up a slew of hits - with Anne tipped for glory once more.

Last month she revived her role as Andy Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada 2, which raked in $677.8 million at the box office and is the fourth highest-grossing film of 2026.

She also received critical acclaim for her role in indie musical Mother Mary earlier in the year, and is soon set to go on the promo trail for sci fi film The End of Oak Street (out August) and thriller Verity (out October) which are both predicted to do well. 

Yet before then, Anne will be seen on screens again in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey playing Penelope, Odysseus's wife.

While the movie , it is still tipped to be a box office success, with an estimated domestic opening weekend of $118 million.

With so many big films under her belt, it looks set to be an exciting 2027 awards season for Anne. 

It will be an exciting start to the year for Anne, who will also then be a new mother, having announced last week she's expecting her third child with husband Adam Shulman. 

There is also a chance that Anne could compete against herself at the Oscars after the Academy have announced a change to voting rules that will allow actors to be nominated for multiple performances in the same category. 

If successful, it will be Anne's second Oscar following her 2012 win for Les Misérables. 

Yet while it may not be her first Oscar, it will no doubt be a happier occasion, given when she made her acceptance speech for playing tragic Fantine in the French drama, it was during the peak of the 'Hatha-hate' campaign and the vitriol towards her was at it's worst. 

While no one can pinpoint the exact moment Anne went from respected actress to national hate figure, the tide seemed to turn around the time of her universally-panned Oscars hosting gig in 2011. 

The actress co-presented the event with James Franco, and the pair were called out for their lack of chemistry and extreme difference in energy levels. 

James was quick to throw Anne under the bus, saying on the Late Show with David Letterman: 'Anne Hathaway is so energetic, I think the Tasmanian Devil would look stoned standing next to Anne Hathaway.' 

For her part, Anne called the gig a 'no-win situation', noting 'it's a really hard gig to stick the landing on'. 

She added that James 'didn't give [her] anything' to work with in the back-and-forth performance. 

That same year, Anne felt the wrath of DC Comics fans when she was cast as Catwoman in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, because they didn't think she was 'sexy' enough.

As criticism mounted, soon every role and every speech Anne made came under intense scrutiny, with online attacks also beginning to target her physical appearance. 

Her Oscar co-host James and Howard Stern dissected the drama on SiriusXM, with Howard musing: 'Everyone sort of hates Anne Hathaway...'

He went on to speculate that it was because she comes off as 'so affected and actressy'.

James didn't defend his former co-host, instead saying: 'I'm not an expert on – I guess they're called Hathahaters – but I think that's what maybe triggers it.'

By 2013, the hate reached fever point when she scooped Best Actress at the Academy Awards, with her acceptance speech ridiculed online. 

Anne later said that amid the barrage of hate she was miserable on Oscars night, explaining: 'I had to stand up in front of people and feel something I don’t feel, which is uncomplicated happiness.

'It’s an obvious thing, you win an Oscar and you’re supposed to be happy. I didn’t feel that way. I felt wrong that I was standing there in a gown that cost more than some people are going to see in their lifetime, and winning an award for portraying pain that still felt very much a part of our collective experience as human beings. 

'I tried to pretend that I was happy and I got called out on it, big time. That’s the truth and that’s what happened. It sucks. But what you learn from it is that you only feel like you can die from embarrassment, you don’t actually die.'

That same year, The New York Times published an article titled Do We Really Hate Anne Hathaway? in which psychologists attempted to unpick the level of public hatred. 

Pier Massimo Forni, a founder of the Civility Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, which focuses on manners and social behaviour, suggested that it was the lure of a 'pile on'.   

He explained: 'The sensation of belonging to a group of like-minded people activates the pleasure centers of the brain. 

'So at a certain point, something like what has happened to Ms Hathaway acquired momentum, and people were willing and eager to be part of that momentum.

'The psychological dynamics at work are, at least in part, the ones at work in cyberbullying.'

Jack Goncalo, an associate professor of organisational behaviour at Cornell University, added that mob mentality could be to blame, explaining: 'If the majority has done my thinking for me, I can move on to something else. People don’t want to think.'