When individual people decide to attack something or someone enough to earn a collective name for themselves, it’s more than a trivial or forgettable nuisance, even when all they are wielding are words. 

Strangely, that is exactly what has been happening to actor Anne Hathaway over the last dozen years. Her attackers have come to be known as “Hathahaters.”

Are these attacks professional? Provoked? Deserved? A single sting is a bearable thing, but a thousand is a terrible thing to endure.

Her obvious eloquence, intelligence, and success make her such an unlikely target — make “Hathahate” such an unlikely phenomenon — that it demands a closer look.

What is going on? Why is Anne Hathaway so disliked?

Sometimes, actors garner a general dislike because the critical consensus is that their acting is substandard. 

This perception that an actor’s work is poor, and possibly damaging to a beloved story, can be deserved when actors take on roles outside their range, or simply don’t have the level of talent required to play a specific kind of role. Is there evidence that either of these possibilities could explain a dislike for Anne Hathaway?

When it comes to acting, there doesn’t seem to be anything Anne Hathaway can’t do. Since her first screen role in the comedy-drama Get Real for Fox Television in 1999, she has starred in over 40 feature films across a wide variety of genres, with six of them on their way in the next two years. She has played leading roles in serious dramas, comedies, historical dramas, musicals, family movies, and even animated shows and films. Hathaway has been one of the most prolific actors of the last 20 years, and she’s still going strong in 2023.

But the secret to Anne Hathaway’s prolific career is not just her incredible range as an actor. Rather, it’s her incredible range combined with a willingness to burrow into the depths of her characters no matter the vulnerability that may entail. She can not only take on just about any role, but can also do it with undeniable excellence at a level that few others can reach. A quick look at just some of her award-winning roles shows how exceptionally talented she is.

In the 2012 film adaptation of the beloved Broadway masterpiece, Les Misérables, a relatively short amount of screen time (a combined 15 minutes) doesn’t keep Anne Hathaway from stealing the show in the company of such legendary film stars as Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, and Helena Bonham Carter. Her portrayal of the tragic character Fantine was so powerful and moving that it earned her the Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress that year, in a role in which her singing talent was also on full display.

Anne Hathaway’s ability to portray realistic women in serious dramas was never so apparent as it was in Rachel Getting Married, Jonathan Demme’s 2008 film about a family dealing with the devastating consequences of addiction, and the healing power of love and forgiveness. While her portrayal of Kym earned her wins for Best Actress from both the Critics Choice Awards and National Board of Review, she also earned an Oscar and Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. Hathaway would continue to master this kind of damaged everywoman character, but with much more levity and whimsy, in the excellent film Colossal.