Hathaway was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in New Jersey, the daughter of an actress mother and lawyer father. She grew up performing in community theater and initially considered becoming a nun before pursuing acting professionally as a teenager, landing her first major role in the Fox television series Get Real in 1999.

Hathaway’s breakout came in 2001 with Disney’s The Princess Diaries, which made her a star among younger audiences and led to a sequel in 2004. She then deliberately pursued more mature material to move beyond a family-friendly image, taking roles in Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Havoc, before her career-defining turn in 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada opposite Meryl Streep, a role that established her as a serious adult leading actress capable of anchoring major studio comedies and dramas alike.

Hathaway went on to earn critical acclaim in films including Rachel Getting Married (2008) and Les Miserables (2012), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She joined major franchise filmmaking with Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises (2012) as Catwoman and Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014), while continuing to take on smaller, character-driven films throughout the 2010s and 2020s. In 2026, she returned to her most famous role in The Devil Wears Prada 2, reuniting with Meryl Streep for the long-awaited sequel.

Photo: Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism – Lee Jeong-woo via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Hathaway has consistently ranked among Hollywood’s higher-paid actresses over the past two decades, with her per-film fees rising substantially as her career progressed from supporting player to lead. Her income in recent years has come from a mix of blockbuster franchise appearances and prestige awards-season films, a combination that has kept her earning power stable even as the film industry has shifted heavily toward streaming.

Photo: PhilipRomano via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

For The Devil Wears Prada 2 in 2026, Hathaway was reported to have earned $12.5 million, matching the fee paid to her co-star Meryl Streep, a notable example of pay parity between the two leads and a reflection of how central both actresses were considered to the sequel’s commercial prospects. Her fees for earlier franchise work, including The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar, were also reported in the multi-million-dollar range typical of major studio tentpole films.

Hathaway has served as a longtime brand ambassador for Lancome, one of the beauty industry’s most prominent celebrity partnerships, and has also had fashion-related endorsement work tied to her status as a red-carpet and awards-season fixture. These beauty and fashion deals have provided a steady income stream that complements her film salaries.

Hathaway has increasingly taken on producing roles alongside acting in recent years, giving her a financial stake in some of the projects she appears in rather than relying solely on upfront acting fees. She has generally kept her business interests more limited in scope than some peers who have launched consumer product lines, focusing her career capital primarily on acting and producing. This more traditional approach, built around consistently high-quality film and stage work rather than a diversified consumer brand, has nonetheless kept her among the more bankable and reliably employed actresses of her generation.

Hathaway has owned residential property in both New York City and the Los Angeles area over the course of her career, consistent with a working actress who splits time between coasts for film and theater work. Specific current real estate holdings have not been extensively publicized in recent years.