Why the world turned on Anne Hathaway and lost her millions in film roles with ‘toxic and humiliating’ ‘Hatha-hate’ campaign to cancel her

She’s currently riding high on the success of the hotly-anticipated sequel, The Devil Wears Prada 2. 

Yet, Anne Hathaway‘s life couldn’t have been more tumultuous in the 20 years that have passed since the original film came out. 

For in the early 2010s Anne suffered from a wave of online hate so vitriolic that it spawned the name ‘Hatha-hate’, resulting in her losing film roles and struggling with her mental health. 

The Hollywood star became the subject of vile and toxic trolling, with the actress dubbed ‘fake’, ‘theatrical’ and winning the title of The Most Annoying Celebrity of 2013, according to a poll by The San Francisco Chronicle.

Even her Oscar win for Les Miserables that year couldn’t save her, with the opening line of her acceptance speech – ‘it came true’ – going viral after viewers branded her ‘pretentious’. 

So what sparked the ‘Hatha-hate’ train? 

While no one can pinpoint the exact moment Anne went from respected actress to national hate figure, the tide seemed to turn around the time of her universally-panned Oscars hosting gig in 2011. 

The actress co-presented the event with James Franco, and the pair were called out for their lack of chemistry and extreme difference in energy levels. 

James was quick to throw Anne under the bus, saying on the Late Show with David Letterman: ‘Anne Hathaway is so energetic, I think the Tasmanian Devil would look stoned standing next to Anne Hathaway.’ 

For her part, Anne called the gig a ‘no-win situation’, noting ‘it’s a really hard gig to stick the landing on’. 

She added that James ‘didn’t give [her] anything’ to work with in the back-and-forth performance. 

That same year, Anne felt the wrath of DC Comics fans when she was cast as Catwoman in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, because they didn’t think she was ‘sexy’ enough.

As criticism mounted, soon every role and every speech Anne made came under intense scrutiny, with online attacks also beginning to target her physical appearance. 

Her Oscar co-host James and Howard Stern dissected the drama on SiriusXM, with Howard musing: ‘Everyone sort of hates Anne Hathaway…’

He went on to speculate that it was because she comes off as ‘so affected and actressy’.

James didn’t defend his former co-host, instead saying: ‘I’m not an expert on – I guess they’re called Hathahaters – but I think that’s what maybe triggers it.’

By 2013, the hate reached fever point when she scooped Best Actress at the Academy Awards, with her acceptance speech ridiculed online. 

Anne later said that amid the barrage of hate she was miserable on Oscars night, explaining: ‘I had to stand up in front of people and feel something I don’t feel, which is uncomplicated happiness.

‘It’s an obvious thing, you win an Oscar and you’re supposed to be happy. I didn’t feel that way. I felt wrong that I was standing there in a gown that cost more than some people are going to see in their lifetime, and winning an award for portraying pain that still felt very much a part of our collective experience as human beings. 

‘I tried to pretend that I was happy and I got called out on it, big time. That’s the truth and that’s what happened. It sucks. But what you learn from it is that you only feel like you can die from embarrassment, you don’t actually die.’

That same year, The New York Times published an article titled Do We Really Hate Anne Hathaway? in which psychologists attempted to unpick the level of public hatred. 

Pier Massimo Forni, a founder of the Civility Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, which focuses on manners and social behaviour, suggested that it was the lure of a ‘pile on’.   

He explained: ‘The sensation of belonging to a group of like-minded people activates the pleasure centers of the brain. 

‘So at a certain point, something like what has happened to Ms Hathaway acquired momentum, and people were willing and eager to be part of that momentum.

‘The psychological dynamics at work are, at least in part, the ones at work in cyberbullying.’

Jack Goncalo, an associate professor of organisational behaviour at Cornell University, added that mob mentality could be to blame, explaining: ‘If the majority has done my thinking for me, I can move on to something else. People don’t want to think.’

Amid the backlash, Anne stepped away from the public eye, later telling the Huffington Post: ‘My impression is that people needed a break from me.’

Yet, she soon found a saviour in the form of director Nolan, who was willing to cast her in a role when other jobs began to dry up, making her the lead in his 2014 blockbuster Interstellar. 

Reflecting on the Hatha-hate train, Anne told Vanity Fair in 2024: ‘A lot of people wouldn’t give me roles because they were so concerned about how toxic my identity had become online. 

‘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. 

‘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.’

Indeed, Anne went on to land roles in Ocean’s 8, Hustle, and WeCrashed, with self-proclaimed ‘Hatha-haters’ soon becoming condemned by fellow social media users. 

Yet, the damage was lasting for Anne, who said during a Women in Hollywood speech in 2022: ‘This was a language I had employed with myself since I was seven.

‘And when your self-inflicted pain is suddenly somehow amplified back at you at, say, the full volume of the internet…. It’s a thing.’ 

She added to Vanity Fair: ‘Humiliation is such a rough thing to go through. The key is to not let it close you down. You have to stay bold, and it can be hard because you’re like, “If I stay safe, if I hug the middle, if I don’t draw too much attention to myself, it won’t hurt”.

‘But if you want to do that, don’t be an actor. You’re a tightrope walker. You’re a daredevil. You’re asking people to invest their time and their money and their attention and their care into you. 

‘So you have to give them something worth all of those things. And if it’s not costing you anything, what are you really offering?’

Now, Anne has officially been embraced by the Hollywood fold and is currently receiving rave reviews for her role in The Devil Wears Prada 2. 

She also has four more films in production, including Nolan’s hotly-anticipated next project The Odyssey and the film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestseller Verity. 

Yet she isn’t entirely untouchable, with fans recently calling her out for posing alongside the current public hate figure – Blake Lively. 

The pair made an appearance at the Met Gala on Monday evening, hours after Blake settled her explosive legal battle with her It Ends With Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni. 

A photo of the duo posing together quickly went viral on X/Twitter, with fans commenting: ‘Get away from her Anne! She’ll sue you’ and ‘Gross. Thought Anne was working on making the public like her again?’