Known for her versatility, American actress Anne Jacqueline Hathaway was born in Brooklyn, New York on 12 November 1982 to Gerald T Hathaway, a lawyer and Kate McCauley, a stage actress. However, she was raised in Millburn, New Jersey, where the family moved, when she was six. At the tender age of eight, Anne toured with her mother during a production of the musical Les Misérables, which fascinated her to acting. But her parents were not keen about that, and probably after a second thought about the future of the children, her mother quit acting to raise Hathaway and her brothers.

During her early days, Anne attended Montessori School at Brooklyn Heights, as well as Wyoming Elementary School in Millburn, and then graduated from Millburn High School, the lone secondary school of the Millburn Township Public Schools, where she used to play soccer and also took part in many plays.

However, Anne also studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, before her graduation, and became the first teenager to be admitted into the famous Barrow Group Theater company's acting program, when she landed her first television role in the family drama Get Real (1999-2000) at the age of 16.

Nevertheless, after her graduation, Anne enrolled at Vassar College to study Political Science and English, before transferring to New York University's Gallatin School of Individualised Study. But her academic pursuits were put on hold as she was cast in the lead role in the Disney comedy The Princess Diaries (2001), co-starring Julie Andrews, and played the role of Mia Thermopolis, an awkward teenager who discovers to her surprise that she is the heir to a royal throne of the fictional Kingdom of Genovia. While the film was a major commercial success, Hathaway’s performance was lauded by many critics, and she earned a nomination for the MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Female Performance. The same year, she also appeared as Jean Sabin, opposite Christopher David Gorham, in Mitch Davis’s The Other Side of Heaven (2001), which was a box-office failure.

Subsequent to her initial success, Anne Hathaway came to be known in mainstream media as a children's role mode and appeared in family-oriented films, playing the role of Madeline Bray in the comedy-drama Nicholas Nickleby (2002), portraying the titular character in the fantasy romantic comedy Ella Enchanted (2004), and also appeared in the sequel, The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004).

However, afraid of being typecast, she soon started to move away from the family-friendly films, began accepting adult roles, and appeared nude in some scenes in the role of Allison Lang, a spoiled socialite, in Havoc (2005), opposite Josh Peck. Next year, Anne Hathaway appeared in Ang Lee’s critically acclaimed film Brokeback Mountain (2005), depicting the emotional and sexual relationship between two men married to women, in which she played the role of Lureen, the wife of Jack, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. The film established her as a versatile actress, earned several Academy Award nominations, and Ang Lee became the first Asian to win the Academy Award for Best Director for it.

After that, Anne starred in the critically acclaimed and commercially successful comedy The Devil Wears Prada (2006), playing the role of Andy Sachs, a naive assistant to a powerful fashion magazine editor, played by Meryl Streep, and further proved her versatility in portraying the titular role of the English Author Jane Austen in the biographical romantic drama Becoming Jane (2007). Eventually, she earned a British Independent Film Award nomination for Best Actress for her performance in the film. To make herself prepared for the role, Hathaway researched about the author, learnt sign language, dance choreography, and playing piano, even moved to England for a month to improve her English accent, and earned a British Independent Film Award nomination for Best Actress for her performance in the film. Immediately after that, she earned her first Academy Award, as well as Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress for her portrayal of Kym, a recovering drug addict in Rachel Getting Married (2008), directed by Jonathan Demme.

In the following years, after starring a couple of romantic comedies, Bride Wars (2009) and Valentine’s Day (2010), Anne Hathaway returned to her fairy-tale roots and played the White Queen in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010), which received mixed reviews, but immediately after that portrayed the character of Maggie Murdock, a free-spirited woman afflicted with Parkinson disease, in Edward Zwick’s erotic romantic comedy-drama Love & Other Drugs (2010), for which she spent time with a Parkinson's patient to research the disease. Her performance in the film, which the reputed film critic Robert Ebert described as warm and lovable, earned her a Satellite Award and also a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress.

After playing the sly, morally ambiguous cat burglar Selina Kyle, the Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises (2012), the final instalment in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, Anne Hathaway portrayed the role of the forlorn Fantine, a prostitute dying of tuberculosis, in Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables (2012). It was a nostalgic journey for Anne, because it is the same role she had seen her mother play onstage when she was a child. In preparation for the role, she researched about prostitution, consumed less than 500 calories a day to look lean and sickly, even cut her hair. She was profusely acclaimed for her performance in the film and won the Academy Award, Golden Globe, BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her subsequent films include, among others, the space drama Interstellar (2014), for which she earned a Saturn Award nomination for Best Actress, the fantasy adventure film Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016), the black comedy Colossal (2016), Ocean's 8 (2018), an all-female sequel of Ocean’s 11, co-starring Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett, and the political thriller The Last Thing He Wanted (2020).

In her personal life, Anne Hathaway was first romantically linked with actor Topher Grace and they allegedly started dating in 1999, which faded away as her career took off with The Princess Diaries in 2001. After that, she got into romantic entanglements with New York City-based famous restauranteur Scott Sartiano, and they were spotted together on several occasions throughout 2002. During that time, she was also rumoured to be dating actor James Holzier for a brief period, although the details of their connection remain unclear. In 2002, Anne was involved to Hugh Dancy, her co-actor in the movie Ella Enchanted and their onset chemistry briefly spilled into real life. However, their relationship was not very public and they parted ways amicably after a few months. Nevertheless, perhaps her most interesting relationship was with the charming and well-connected Italian businessman Raffaello Follieri, whom she met in New York at a gala for the American Cancer Society, and they began dating shortly thereafter. But their relationship lasted for four years before ending rather dramatically when Follieri was arrested in 2008 due to his involvement in the Vati-Con scandal, relating to the misappropriation an investment.

In the aftermath of her breakup with Follieri, Hathaway found herself romantically involved with actor Josh Lucas, but they seemingly went their separate ways shortly thereafter as Lucas started dating actor Rachel McAdams at the beginning of 2009. Anne Hathaway met Adam Shulman through a mutual friend in the early fall of 2008 at the Palms Springs Film Festival, and their romance blossomed quickly. Shulman proposed to Hathaway in November 2011, while they were on a vacation in New Mexico and they got married almost a year later, on 29 September 2012, in a private estate in Big Sur, California. Since then, they are living happily with their two children.