Anne Hathaway thanks Christopher Nolan for rescuing her career
Anne Hathaway has thanked British director Christopher Nolan for rescuing her career. This comes after it was recently announced that she has joined his upcoming movie, which is yet to be publicly titled and remains shrouded in mystery.
Hathaway has worked with Nolan twice before. Her first outing was 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises, in which she played Selina Kyle/Catwoman in the third and final instalment of the auteur’s Dark Knight trilogy. The second was 2014’s science-fiction epic Interstellar, she starred as Dr Amelia Brand alongside Matthew McConaughey and Jessica Chastain.
Both films came amid a testing time for Hathaway, as public opinion on her dropped significantly, and she became a hate figure on the internet. This was due to several factors, namely misogyny and the backlash to her 2011 Oscars hosting gig alongside James Franco, which was criticised for a lack of chemistry.
Furthermore, Hathaway was ridiculed for being cast as Catwoman and for performing in 2012’s adaptation of the musical Les Misérables, wherein she played the dying prostitute Fantine. Although she won the Oscar for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ in 2012 for playing Fantine, her appearances during awards season also heightened the online hate.
In a new interview with Women’s Wear Daily, Hathaway has reflected on her joy about being cast in a third Nolan film, saying: “It makes me feel like I’m doing something right.” While most details about the director’s follow-up to Oppenheimer are being kept under wraps, it’s been revealed that Matt Damon, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, Zendaya and Lupita Nyong’o will also appear.
“I have so many feelings about it that I don’t even know how to articulate,” the actor continued. “It fills me with so much joy … I love Chris and Emma Nolan so much, and to be invited into their world [is] one of the best places you can find yourself. Getting to be invited twice really felt like something, three felt like it would’ve been greedy, so I never let myself hope that that would happen, and that it has makes me emotional, to be perfectly honest. It makes me feel like I’m doing something right”.
Elsewhere, in a new interview with Vanity Fair, Hathaway told the publication that many people wouldn’t give her roles during the early-mid 2010s because they “were so concerned about how toxic my identity had become online”.
She added: “I had an angel in Christopher Nolan, who did not care about that and gave me one of the most beautiful roles I’ve had in one of the best films that I’ve been a part of.”
Hathaway continued: “I don’t know if he knew that he was backing me at the time, but it had that effect. And my career did not lose momentum the way it could have if he hadn’t backed me.”
Looking back on Interstellar reviving her career, Hathaway also told WWD that it was “vitalizing, reviving, encouraging, and it was just a gift in that moment. Getting Interstellar at any point in your life would have been a career highlight. The moment that I got to go into that world, for me personally, it was the safest and most exhilarating place I could ever be as an actor and as a human.”
What else do we know about Christopher Nolan’s new movie?
Nolan has written the script and is directing his next project, which Universal Pictures will distribute, and the release date is set for July 17th, 2026. It has also been confirmed that Nolan is producing alongside his wife, Emma Thomas, under their shared Syncopy banner. A shoot in the first half of 2025 is currently in the works.
Nolan is famed for being a close-mouthed filmmaker, keeping his projects under wraps until the time is right to reveal the key details and kick off the media circus. Previously, outlets have reported that sources say the setting is not in the present day, with it unclear whether that means the past or the future.
However, the news of this upcoming project has arrived with fewer plot or logline details than is usual for the director. This has led to much speculation, ranging from it being a period vampire movie to a helicopter action thriller. Insiders assert that no suggestion has come close to reality. Far Out‘s Michael Gordon thinks an adaptation of the cult 1967 series, The Prisoner, could be in order.
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