Up Close With Anne Hathaway

The Academy Award–winning actor talks about motherhood, her career and her new role starring opposite Jared Leto and executive-producing 'WeCrashed,' Apple TV+’s new series on the inner workings of WeWork.

By Marisa Meltzer | Portraits by Dan Martensen for WSJ. Magazine
April 1, 2022
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Anne Hathaway spent the past few years unaware of the rise and fall of WeWork.

“Between just being focused on my work and becoming a mother—it was a period of my life I don’t think I was following all of the various news stories that WeWork was a part of,” says the 39-year-old actor. “I somehow missed the entire thing.”

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The first time she was made fully aware of the backstory of the multibillion dollar co-working startup—anchored by the intense relationship between its founder, Adam Neumann, and his wife, Rebekah Paltrow Neumann—was when she was offered the part of Rebekah in WeCrashed.

Hathaway—who prefers to be called Annie—has been a household name since she first appeared in the Princess Diaries movies.

She then transitioned into adult roles (Brokeback Mountain, top left) and iconic characters (The Devil Wears Prada, top right; Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises, bottom right) and became an Oscar winner (Les Misérables, bottom left) and host.

She remembers admiring Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth as a teenager and then later getting to work with her on Ocean’s Eight as a full-circle experience. “She’s got this innate understanding of style and morphs into the atmosphere and demands of what she’s doing, which is why she’s been able to channel so many different genres,” says Ms. Blanchett. “Maybe panache, that’s what it is.”

When co-creators and executive producers of WeCrashed offered Hathaway the part of Rebekah, she was intrigued once she got up to speed on coverage.

“The story intersected, I thought, at a lot of really interesting points: late-stage capitalism, the commodification of spirituality and toxic positivity,” Hathaway says.

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WeCrashed is also a chaotic love story between Rebekah and Jared Leto’s borderline messianic Adam. Hathaway was excited to take on the role opposite Leto, who transforms into Neumann, an Israeli serial entrepreneur.

Ms. Neumann, whom Hathaway has yet to meet, has a distinctive low voice and distinct cadence. Hathaway worked with a dialect coach, but it wasn’t until Leto arrived on set as Neumann that she nailed it. “I’d been playing around with it, but it was something I was doing rather than feeling. And then, when he showed up and started speaking as Adam, it was like a tuning fork for me,” she says.

In her personal life, Hathaway loves being a mother, not just because of her kids but also for what kind of person it made her want to be.

“I didn’t feel fully landed and fully here until I was a mom,” she says.

“It’s not like I was lacking integrity, but it made me want to be completely, on every level, true to my word," she says. "And that meant stopping any nonsense that I had going on inside myself. And it’s little breaks that you give yourself sometimes when you know that you’re not being your best self.”

When she was pregnant for the first time, some people advised her that her feelings around her career might change—that she might care less. “I found that wasn’t the case: I actually cared quite a bit more,” she says.

Hathaway has been busy recently: She will play Esther Graff in Armageddon Time alongside Anthony Hopkins and Jeremy Strong, and she is slated to appear in She Came to Me alongside Peter Dinklage and Marisa Tomei.

There’s a romantic comedy in development she hopes comes together for the fall or spring. She’s ready for comedy after a series of dramatic roles. “And then I’m going on vacation,” she says.

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She will turn 40 this year. “I have a really tight-knit group of friends from college, and we all realized that we were just going to be celebrating each other’s birthday every other week,” she says. “So we decided that we’re all going to go someplace together and have a joint 40th birthday party.”

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Styling by Katelyn Gray; Hair, Orlando Pita; makeup, Gucci Westman; manicure, Maria Salandra; set design, Andy Harman.

WeCrashed videos and photos by Apple
Film stills by Everett Collection (4)

Produced by Leah Latella

 Read the full interview