"The Odyssey" is Anne Hathaway's third movie with director Christopher Nolan. But with this film, she felt that she could finally "be a human being."Show Caption
NEW YORK – Is anybody making cooler choices than Anne Hathaway right now?So far this year, the versatile Oscar winner has embodied an unraveling pop star (“Mother Mary”) and dogged magazine journalist (“The Devil Wears Prada 2”), with a sci-fi adventure (“The End of Oak Street”) and erotic thriller (“Verity”) still on the horizon.“Maybe I’m just greedy,” Hathaway says with a wink, catching her breath amid a whirlwind promotional tour for her latest film, “The Odyssey.” “Lucky and greedy, that’s me.”Based on Homer’s ancient poem, “The Odyssey” (in theaters July 17) follows Penelope (Hathaway) and her grown son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), as they await the return of battle-worn patriarch Odysseus (Matt Damon).But years drag on with no news of the king’s whereabouts, and more than 100 suitors loiter in his palace day in and day out, vying to woo Penelope and take the throne. And yet Penelope stands firm, confident in her conviction that her husband is still alive.“It’s a really, really rich character,” Hathaway, 43, says, extolling the depth and intelligence that director and writer Christopher Nolan imbues Penelope with. Her resilience, too, is subtly reflected in the jewel tones of Ellen Mirojnik’s costumes and Gloria Pasqua Casny’s regal hairstyling.“Penelope wears bright colors and does her hair every day because she is not in mourning, and every day could be the day that he comes home,” Hathaway says. “It becomes this almost defiant ritual that she has: She's choosing life in the face of very damning odds. She's choosing to believe that something miraculous can happen.”Anne Hathaway on her moving 'Odyssey' reunion with Christopher Nolan“The Odyssey” is Hathaway’s third project with Nolan after 2012’s “The Dark Knight Rises” and 2014’s “Interstellar.” She laughs as she recalls her first meeting with the eminent filmmaker: She showed up wearing a Harley Quinn-style striped top, only to discover that he was considering her for the role of vampy burglar Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman.Nolan’s brooding Batman sequel not only taught her the stamina that a colossal action movie requires, but also how to “play with iconography.”Michelle Pfeiffer’s iconic Catwoman “burned so bright in my imagination," Hathaway says. “I thought, ‘What can I do here to take something that people think they know, and how can I show another facet of the diamond?’ That really served me well in this one. Penelope’s probably one of the best-known characters in our collective history.”Hathaway went on to win an Oscar in 2013 for “Les Misérables,” around the time she was weathering incessant hatred on social media for her earnest public persona. In 2024, she told Vanity Fair that she lost out on roles because of the online toxicity, yet Nolan still cast her as an emotionally intuitive scientist in space drama “Interstellar.”Looking back now, she says that Nolan and his producer wife, Emma Thomas, are the kinds of people she aspires to be.“They show up for the people in their lives,” Hathaway says. “I think [about] that particular moment, getting cast after a difficult time in my life when few people were hiring me. But Chris stepped up and gave me one of the best parts I've ever gotten in a movie that has now become so beloved. It just speaks to what they care about; they tune out the noise."Nolan says he has a “fairly simple” reason for wanting to work with Hathaway again and again: “She’s just an amazing actor. If you look at ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ and ‘Interstellar,’ those characters could not be more different. But she approaches them with a simplicity. She’s not hiding or transforming herself – she’s just finding the emotional truth.”Part of Hathaway’s excitement for “The Odyssey” was getting to show Nolan how she’s grown, both as a performer and person.She was 28 when she played Catwoman, and “I was very afraid of making a mistake,” Hathaway says. “I was afraid if I wasn’t optimal every second, that maybe I would be making a bad impression, or letting him down, or that I'd failed. I was in my head about the whole thing. The idea of just having a human moment, I was not interested in that back then.” 'The Odyssey' Anne Hathaway recalls sleep-deprived moment on set"The Odyssey" star Anne Hathaway recalls a sleep-deprived moment on the set she blanked on her lines and how Christopher Nolan handled it perfectly.But she wasn’t so self-critical on “The Odyssey.” She remembers stepping onto the Sicily set on her first day of filming and completely blanking on her lines, as she wrestled with lack of sleep and jet lag.“Chris cracked the funniest, best joke that just guided us through the moment,” Hathaway recalls. “I was like, ‘Oh, I can be a human being on this one. I’m still going to try my hardest and bring my A-game, but I’m not going to panic or beat myself up if something happens.’ As a result, it rubbed off on the performance. It made me be a little bit wilder, and let me be curious about what was coming as opposed to trying to hit a mark.”How Barbra Streisand responded to Anne Hathaway's pregnancy announcementHathaway counts “The Prestige” and “Tenet” among her favorites of Nolan’s work, and she’s eager to show more of his movies to her kids as they get older. The star shares two sons with her producer husband Adam Shulman: Jonathan, 10, and Jack, 6.“We just watched ‘Dunkirk’ as a family and we were spellbound,” Hathaway says. “One of my children is very curious about military history – in particular, World War I and II – so he was reading a novel that took place right after Dunkirk. We thought the film could be an interesting supplementary thing and it brought it to life for him.”The actress also announced on Instagram in late June that she’s expecting a third child. One of her celebrity well-wishers was none other than Barbra Streisand, 84, with whom she dueted on a 2016 album.“Wasn’t that something else?” Hathaway exclaims. “She just sent me a note. I’m like, ‘Well, we’re going to frame that one! Stick it in the nursery!’ She means so much to me. Obviously, I haven’t accomplished a fraction of what she has. But to just be curious about the world and to say: ‘You don’t tell me who I am. Please, let me show you.’ For me, as a woman in Hollywood, her doing that just makes more space for me to maybe grow into something.”
