Peak ANNE

Back in The Devil Wears Prada 2, ANNE HATHAWAY opens up about AMBITION, AGING, falling in public, and finding HER OWN way FORWARD

- Story by LEAH CHERNIKOFF Photographs by INEZ & VINOODH Styling by BEAT BOLLIGER

Anne Hathaway has given me a reading assignment.

It's a letter the soccer player Gabriel Jesus, who plays for Arsenal, published in December in the Players' Tribune about his recovery from a devastating ACL injury that sidelined him for most of the year. Jesus writes about how fatherhood and being in the moment with his young children helped him get through the brutally long rehabilitation process and how he has come out on the other side feeling stronger and more grateful than he ever could have imagined. Hathaway and her family are big Arsenal fans. (She played soccer growing up.) The letter was passed around in their group chat, and she wants me to read it before we speak. There's something about the notion of being able to embrace all of life's thorniness and letting it inform, or even enhance, what you do that has deeply resonated with her. “It’s the idea of there being opportunity inside of every moment, even the ones that are challenging, that seem like a crisis,” Hathaway tells me when we meet the next day. “I've been on this journey as an actress for the majority of my life now, and I always think about it as two parts, and the first part made no room for life.” The first part, I gather, refers to her blinders-on, rocket-ship ascent through Hollywood, becoming one of its most versatile actresses, and navigating life as an extremely famous person at an extremely young age. The second part involves parenthood, sobriety, a widening of the aperture to let more life in and be present for it. Now, she says, she has “entered a different place” and is “seeking harmony between the two.” Hathaway is also talking about work-life balance, a concept that actresses were asked about for decades and their male counterparts never were. It’s an idea that may have reached its apex (or nadir, depending on how you look at it) in 2013, when Sheryl Sandberg told every woman to