Anne Hathaway's 5 Best Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes

This article contains discussion of addiction.

That weird period of time immediately after her Oscar win where the world decided everyone hated Anne Hathaway notwithstanding, the actor has been a pretty beloved performer for decades now. After getting her start in teen fare like "The Princess Diaries" and "Ella Enchanted," Hathaway moved into more adult fare like "Brokeback Mountain" and the massively successful adaptation "The Devil Wears Prada" (which got a blockbuster sequel, also starring Hathaway, in 2026). After winning her first Academy Award (as of this writing) for her brief but massively impactful appearance as Fantine in Tom Hooper's otherwise underwhelming stage musical adaptation "Les Misérables," Hathaway cemented herself as an A-lister ... but which are her best films according to Rotten Tomatoes?

Some housekeeping, to start things off. Technically, Hathaway's fourth highest-rated film on the review aggregator is the Japanese animated movie "The Cat Returns," helmed by Hiroyuki Morita. Because Hathaway voices a role in the English dub, and because it's a much smaller film that came extremely early in her career, we've elected not to include it on this list and feature her sixth highest-rated film on the back end instead. Now that we've got that all sorted, here are Hathaway's five best movies according to Rotten Tomatoes ... and no, "Les Misérables" is not on here.

If you've never seen Anne Hathaway's unbelievable Oscar-nominated performance in Jonathan Demme's 2008 drama "Rachel Getting Married," run, don't walk, to check it out. Written by Jenny Lumet, this intense family drama casts Hathaway not as the titular Rachel who's getting married — that would be Rosemarie DeWitt — but her troubled sister Kym Buchman, who gets special permission to leave a rehabilitation program to attend Rachel's wedding to Sidney Williams (TV on the Radio frontman Tunde Adebimpe). 

To say that Kym has a difficult relationship with her sister Rachel and parents Paul and Abby (Bill Irwin and Debra Winger) is an understatement, and when we learn the tragedy that befell the Buchman family years prior, we understand why. Still, Kym's addiction also often turns her into a person that her family finds extremely hard to handle, and the rift between Rachel and Kym threatens to derail the entire wedding weekend — especially early in the movie, when Kym learns that Rachel's best friend Emma (Anisa George), not Kym, will serve as Rachel's maid of honor. If you've ever loved someone in the throes of addiction, "Rachel Getting Married" is a tough watch. Nevertheless, it's worth the journey, and it features one of Hathaway's best (and rawest) performances, along with an 85% critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Both "Batman Begins" (released in 2005) and "The Dark Knight Rises," which hit theaters in 2012, suffer when they're compared to 2008's "The Dark Knight" ... which is unfair, because neither of these movies are bad. It's just that "The Dark Knight" is basically one of the best movies ever made. Still, the trilogy of Christopher Nolan's Batman movies concludes with "The Dark Knight Rises," and with 87% on Rotten Tomatoes, it's still one of Anne Hathaway's best films according to the review aggregator.

After the events of "The Dark Knight," we catch up with Christian Bale's Gotham-dwelling millionaire Bruce Wayne in "The Dark Knight Rises" as he's grieving the loss of his great love Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Despite trying to abandon the Batman mask and cape, Bruce is called back into action when Gotham is attacked by the film's big villain Bane (Tom Hardy). So, where does Hathaway come into play? She takes on the role of Selina Kyle, a cat burglar who begins the film working against Bruce but ends up becoming his ally (and, eventually, his apparent lover when the two abscond to Europe). "The Dark Knight Rises" isn't a perfect film, but Hathaway's sneering, seductive performance as Selina is absolutely astounding ... and I'd put it in the Catwoman Hall of Fame with Eartha Kitt, frankly. (Sorry, Halle Berry.)

Anne Hathaway may have told a fib (maybe a few fibs) to Oscar-winning director Ang Lee to book a pivotal supporting role in "Brokeback Mountain," but frankly, I get why she did it ... and I'm glad that she did. After years of teen movies, Hathaway graduated to the big leagues with "Brokeback Mountain," Lee's romantic drama based on the short story by Annie Proulx that stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as cowboys Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, who strike up a forbidden romance in the early 1960s while working as shepherds and ranchers on the titular mountain in Wyoming. Despite being deeply in love, both Ennis and Jack marry women: Ennis finally ties the knot with his fiancée Alma Briggs (Michelle Williams), and Jack strikes up a romance with rodeo queen Lureen Newsome (Hathaway).

Without getting into spoilers just in case you haven't seen "Brokeback Mountain" (please go watch "Brokeback Mountain"), Hathaway's Lureen delivers an astonishing, gut-wrenching monologue at the end of Ennis and Jack's tortured love story, leading to a shocking revelation that changes everything about the pair's secret bond. Hathaway might have told some lies to book this role, but it's good that she did, because it's legitimately hard to imagine anybody else performing this perfectly as Lureen ... and after all these years, the movie still has a rating of 88% on Rotten Tomatoes.

It's a shame that "Dark Waters," the 2019 legal thriller helmed by Todd Haynes that's based on Nathaniel Rich's 2016 New York Magazine article "The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare," flew under the radar; frankly, it probably has something to do with the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the world mere months after its release. So, what's the deal with this movie, which is pretty good and definitely worth watching? Mark Ruffalo leads the cast as real-life lawyer Robert Bilott — the subject of Rich's article — as he brings a case against the manufacturing company DuPont, believing that chemicals it dumped in the small town of Parkersburg, West Virginia, are killing dairy cattle that exhibit bizarre symptoms before they drop dead. Despite immediate opposition from DuPont's main legal counsel Phil Donnelly (Victor Garber), Robert forges ahead ... and he's aided by his wife Sarah Barlage Bilott (Anne Hathaway), who also has a legal degree.

This movie belongs largely to Ruffalo (and Bill Camp, who portrays Robert's friend and client Wilbur Tennant, who develops cancer from the dumped chemicals), but Hathaway is also fantastic as Sarah, a woman whose choice to stay home while her husband works doesn't necessarily seem to line up with her considerable intellect. Ultimately, this movie is the second most critically successful entry in Hathaway's career; it still has 89% on Rotten Tomatoes.

"The Odyssey" is, as of this writing, the newest movie in Anne Hathaway's oeuvre ... but when you consider that this adaptation of the ancient Greek poem attributed to Homer is written and directed by Christopher Nolan, you start to understand how and why it accomplished this feat. Nolan casts his previous collaborator Matt Damon, who appeared in "Interstellar" and "Oppenheimer," as the long-lost hero Odysseus, who wins the Trojan War with his famous horse gambit before promptly getting lost at sea for about a decade. Hathaway plays his wife Penelope, a clever and crafty woman who, forced to entertain a host of loutish and drunken suitors in her Ithacan palace, tells the men she'll only remarry when her loom project is finished ... a project that she manually unpicks every night so that it will never be completed.

Penelope, in the hands of a lesser performer, could be a pretty uninteresting character. Thankfully, Hathaway was chosen to play her, and she's perfect. From a scene where she unleashes her fury upon her and Odysseus' nearly-grown son Telemachus (Tom Holland) in a moment of rare, raw emotion to the slight turn of her head upon hearing a bow string plucked during the film's explosive third act, Hathaway brings a full interiority to Penelope, even as the film centers her husband. The movie, which earned a great review from /Film's own Chris Evangelista, has a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it the highest-rated film of Hathaway's career according to the review aggregator.

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).