Actress Anne Hathaway ends ‘renaissance’ year with third No. 1 movie Verity
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Anne Hathaway in Verity, her third No. 1 film on an opening weekend in a calendar year.
PHOTO: SONY PICTURES
Derrick Bryson Taylor
NEW YORK – Until 2026, American actress and Oscar winner Anne Hathaway had not appeared in a major studio film in nearly a decade. But when she returned, she did so in monumental fashion.
Since April, she has starred in five major films, and after the weekend’s success of Verity, she appears to be the first woman to have leading roles in three films that opened at No. 1 at the North American box office in a single year.
Verity, an adaptation of a Colleen Hoover novel of the same name, earned an estimated US$33 million (S$42 million) over the weekend, snagging the top spot by beating the ecological satire Digger, starring Tom Cruise, by US$25 million.
In the psychological thriller, Hathaway plays Verity Crawford, a novelist left in a catatonic state after a car accident. Dakota Johnson portrays the writer brought in to finish Crawford’s work.
Her winning trajectory began in May, when she earned her first No. 1 film by reviving her role as the chaotic but clever journalist Andy Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada 2. In July, she did it again, as Penelope in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.
Scoring three No. 1 films on an opening weekend in a calendar year is never easy.
Jim Carrey did it in 1994 with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask and Dumb And Dumber. Ten years later, Ben Stiller pulled off a trifecta with Along Came Polly, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story and Meet The Fockers.
By any measure, Hathaway, 43, has had a busy year. Verity, her fifth and final release of 2026, followed her work as the title character in the pop-fever dream Mother Mary in April; her performance in The Devil Wears Prada 2 the next month; and The Odyssey in mid-July.
In August, she played a brave mother in the dinosaur adventure tale The End Of Oak Street.
Hathaway’s “renaissance” year at the box office signals the demand for more female-driven films, said Christina Lane, a professor of film studies at the University of Miami School of Communication.
“Women have been a key factor in driving this year’s box office,” she said, offering as examples Wuthering Heights (which starred Margot Robbie), Send Help (Rachel McAdams) and Disclosure Day (Emily Blunt).
A representative for Hathaway, who is pregnant with her third child, declined to comment on her recent triumphs, saying that she was officially on maternity leave. NYTIMES
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.