In an exclusive interview with Harper’s BAZAAR Executive Editor Leah Chernikoff, Hathaway, ahead of THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2 premiere and a slate of highly anticipated films, discusses returning to her character Andy Sachs 20 years later, coming of age onscreen, and evolving with her fans alongside her most iconic roles: “I feel like I was, like, everybody’s babysitter,” Hathaway says. “And I was a child when I made THE PRINCESS DIARIES. I was still a 22-year-old mess of a human when I made THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA. And so, we’ve grown up together, and I’m so happy for them and how their lives are unfolding. Like, this crazy thing where people just graduate from high school and they just send me their graduation announcements. People send me their wedding invitations. It’s so very sweet. And I feel bad, because I can never do anything with them, because I’m not Taylor Swift–level organized. Maybe someday.”
On moving away from the concept of “work-life balance”: She tells me about having made a “conscious shift” in recent years to stop living her life as a “stressed person,” which coincided with her decision to stop drinking. “Before, there was this focus that was really uncompromising and uninterrupted,” Hathaway says. “And I just can’t tell you anymore what life is like without kids, but kids interrupt you all the time.” Balance, she explains, is too fragile a concept. “My friends and I talk about it a lot, and we actually feel very defeated by the concept of balance,” she says. “If the weight shifts in one direction, you then have to bounce it up on the other side, and we find that it winds us up as opposed to making us steady.” Harmony, Hathaway theorizes, is more forgiving. “We’re like, ‘We seek to harmonize our life.’”
On her very public fall while filming The Devil Wears Prada 2: “I was aware that I was falling, I was aware that I was being photographed, and I was also aware that, like, so many people on the crew, their hearts had just jumped up into their throat, so I needed to get up quickly to make sure they knew I was okay,” she recalls. She jumped up immediately after, with her arms outstretched like a gymnast finishing a routine, to let everyone know she was okay. But privately, she told Frankel, “Oh no. I’m news.”
On her uncompromising work ethic: “I think I just knew from a young age that although I’m really lucky in so many ways and grew up with certain privileges, there wasn’t, like, this big life that was just going to be handed to me,” Hathaway says. “I’ve always just felt defined by my work ethic, because my skill set is what it is and I have to work with what I have, but how hard I can work is something that I can control. And so I never want to pull up short and feel like I could have worked harder. If I know that I’m working hard, I can live with who I am.”
On training for her role in Mother Mary despite not being a natural dancer: “I wasn’t concerned that I couldn’t keep up with Beyoncé, because she is Beyoncé.” But then, for Mother Mary, Hathaway had to become Beyoncé—or someone like her. “It was really, really humbling to have to deal with the limitations that my body had always had, that I’d accepted as part of my identity, but now they were no longer acceptable.” So she pushed herself. “Maybe other people would have been able to do it in a shorter amount of time or not have to train as hard, but I knew that it would hurt so much more if I hadn’t just left it all on the floor. So at the end of it, I couldn’t say, ‘Well, yeah, I wish I’d done this better. I wish I’d done that better.’ But I know I literally couldn’t have worked harder.”
On body image and aging: “So, I’m ready to have this great day with my family. And I am going to be in front of strangers, and people have phones. And all of the things. But my family is waiting for me. And I looked and I just went, ‘What?’ And then I looked again and I said, ‘You are 43.’ And looking at a 43-year-old body, I was like, ‘Nice.’ When I was expecting to see something that I am not, I felt insecure. But when I actually looked at what it actually is, I was okay with it.” And really, there isn’t much other choice than to be okay with it all, even as it gets harder. Because it does, inevitably, as you get older, but that can be clarifying too: “I think you realize that worry should be reserved for the really big stuff.”
Anne Hathaway covers HARPER’S BAZAAR’s April 2026 The Now Issue, on newsstands April 7.
[Photo Credit: Inez and Vinoodh for Harper’s BAZAAR Magazine]
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