2026 may well be the year of Anne Hathaway — with a stacked lineup of films (including yet another, Verity, opening this weekend) and a baby due any day. She’s also topping the Gold Derby odds for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Christopher Nolan‘s epic The Odyssey.
But her experience making the film was unlike any other, she told reporters in a press conference Friday. “It’s this really amazing combination of you’ve never worked harder, but you wake up early just because you want to be there to soak everything up every second, and you’re having the most wonderful conversations with a brilliant artist and a great mind, who’s also just a really, really down-to-earth person at the same time,” she said of working with Nolan for the third time (after The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar).
Here’s what she had to say about building chemistry with co-star Matt Damon even though they were apart for nearly the entire film, why she felt “like a beginner” learning to work with the Imax cameras, and what the elaborate costumes reveal about Penelope’s state of mind.
Why she learned not to bring Nolan “stupid knots”
“I’ve been so influenced by him at every stage,” says Hathaway of Nolan, pointing out that each of her films with him have come in a different decade of her life. “One of the things about working with him is that his mind works so quickly, and it sees with such depth and clarity. The level of detail that he’s able to hold all of these tiny, tiny choices — he holds them all in his head as he’s telling these vast stories.”
When working with Nolan on The Dark Knight Rises, she says, “I remember thinking, ‘Don’t bring him stupid knots’ — anything that’s easily untied, don’t bother him with that. Wait until there’s a knot you simply cannot untie by yourself.” Hathaway recounts that when she eventually did bring him such a problem, he’d clarify it “usually in less than three sentences.” “He’s got that gift of being able to distill complicated concepts into explanations that anyone can follow,” she says. “I really respect that gift and that power. I never wanted to over-rely on him, because I love that he trusts actors to do their job. He trusts us and believes that we’ll care enough to do a lot of the work ourselves — but then he’s always there when you need that assist.”
She got into a hole — and Nolan helped her get out
By the time she got to the reunion scene between Penelope and Odysseus, Hathaway says she was “in the hole.” “It just happens sometimes,” she explains. “It’s terrible as an actor, one of the most intensely painful things you can experience. It’s almost like your nervous system flips inside out. … You sort of dissociate. You can’t access your emotions anymore, you can’t breathe. It’s a physical reaction.”
Mia Goth and HathawayUniversal PicturesBecause she has known Nolan for so long, she says she was able to go to him and explain what was happening. “And Chris — this unbelievable, world-dominating director — just sat with me as a friend,” she says. “He sat with me and got me laughing and made the whole thing OK, and got me breathing again. My God, he can direct fleets of ships, … he can move mountains, he can bend our brains. But the thing that felt so beautiful was that he was just a person sitting next to a person, understanding that I didn’t want this to happen — that it wasn’t an unprofessional thing, it was just a human, emotional, physical experience. I felt safe enough that eventually everything righted itself, and we were able to finish the scene. I’m always amazed that somebody who is that powerful can also be so gentle at the same time.”
Why Penelope and Odysseus’ love is “like weaving”
Hathaway explains how she and Damon worked together to build the fabric of Penelope and Odysseus’ relationship, especially since they share little screen time. “Cinema is also a lot of meticulous details underneath all of the things the audience should never focus on,” she says. “You shouldn’t be aware of all of those underlayers, but it’s one of my favorite parts. Funny enough, it’s a lot like weaving.”
She and Damon agreed that despite the distance between them, they were a happy couple. “We were very clear with each other that they are soulmates, and that they are aware of their good fortune — because they are aware that this is a time when marriages are made for political convenience,” she says. “Most couples in this time period really don’t love each other. Most people are having very rough versions of being alive, and yet these two are so crazy for each other. They love each other, they respect each other, they can’t get enough of each other, and they live in a palace, and they have a family, and a great dog.”
And that that’s what made their separation so tragic. “I always thought of Penelope as just ride-or-die,” she says. “I imagined their modern-day equivalent as two people who loved motorcycles together — Penelope can 100% handle her own bike, but she loves riding with Odysseus.”
Everyone was “a beginner” with the Imax cameras
Hathaway calls the experience of working with the oversize cameras “flying blind.”
“The only acting I’d ever done on an Imax camera has been a lot of action sequences — fights and things like that,” she says. “The truth of the matter is, we were all beginners. Chris had never shot an intimate scene on Imax before. Matt had never done it. So everybody, from the most experienced, powerful person on the set to the newest member of the team, was on the same page. We were all having a beginner experience.”
She says she learned as they went along. “I genuinely didn’t understand what the frame was,” she says. “If the camera was right here, it was hard to understand that my face would be centered in it, but that you’d be able to see so much behind me. So I relied on Chris to guide my performance. But I was definitely aware of not wanting to do too much, because I thought that could be fatal on a camera like this, on lenses like these.”
It was all Greek to her
She got into character by learning a bit of Greek, she explains.
“I found a biblical scholar who had written a really interesting book about the letters to the Hebrews, which was adapted from ancient Greek,” Hathaway says. “I found that to be a really interesting piece of material to help me understand the ancient Greek world, and then how it was transposed into — or affected by — the Judeo-Christian ethic that is so much a part of the world I grew up in.”
The book contained “really amazing” Greek words that stuck with her. “You have these access words sometimes that are your way into the character, and I got a lot of those, like arkhagos [which means leader] and kakia, which means evil,” she says. “I remember standing behind the screen, looking out at all the suitors, and just thinking, ‘kakia.’ Stuff like that just helps.”
Dressing the part
Hathaway credits costume designer Ellen Mirojnick with crafting Penelope’s look — as well as the keen eye of Nolan, who wanted the character to be in strong colors.
“I’d thought it was unusual that Penelope, who’s experiencing such heartache and this grief she’s not even allowed to feel — because she’s in limbo, not knowing if he’s alive or dead — would wear these costumes and have these ornate hairdos,” recalls Hathaway. “It had stayed with me the entire film.”
And then realization hit, she explains. “I remember turning to Matt, grabbing his hand, and saying, ‘Oh my gosh, Matt, she wears color because she’s not in mourning. Because he’s not dead, and she gets dressed up and does her hair every single day — because today could be the day he’s coming home.'” That had been with us the entire time, and I just hadn’t been able to articulate it. As soon as I saw it, I wanted to cry, because it added this depth to my character. It was a gift from Ellen, and it was a gift from Chris.”
