Anne Hathaway Cried At D23 When Disney Made Her A Legend
Anne Hathaway was officially inducted into the Disney Legends Hall of Fame on August 16, 2026, at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event in Anaheim, California, becoming visibly emotional during a ceremony that brought together the full arc of a career that began when she was 17 years old and a script called The Princess Diaries landed in her hands. The honor was presented by The Devil Wears Prada director David Frankel and Vogue editor Anna Wintour, who appeared on video to call Hathaway her ideal front-row companion and theater date and to describe doing a comedy routine with her at the Oscars as like dancing with Fred Astaire. Her husband Adam Shulman, their sons Jonathan and Jack, and her parents were all in the audience. When she took the stage, Hathaway looked out at her family and said: I am here today because I am one of the most insanely lucky people in the world. Then she pointed at her parents and added, how lucky am I that I was born into a family where acting, storytelling and imagination were valued and celebrated. The crowd gave her a sustained standing ovation she could not immediately speak over.
The ceremony arrived at the peak of an extraordinary year. Hathaway's 2026 box office total has crossed $2 billion worldwide, driven by her role in The Odyssey alongside Matt Damon and her return as Andy Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada 2, which helped push the franchise past $1 billion total. A Princess Diaries 3 was also announced at D23 earlier in the weekend, with Hathaway returning as Mia and Adele Lim directing, bringing her Disney story full circle in a way that felt deliberate. Frankel revealed on stage that the studio originally wanted a different actress entirely to play Andy Sachs in the original Devil Wears Prada. The person who changed their minds was Meryl Streep, who had seen Hathaway in Brokeback Mountain and said: yeah, this girl. Game recognizes game, Frankel told the D23 crowd. Hathaway acknowledged her co-stars from both Prada films and then pretended for a moment to have forgotten Streep's name before delivering the punchline with perfect timing. She closed her speech by describing 2026 as a joy and incredible, saying she was aware of the rarity of the experience she has had and grateful in a way that was impossible to fake. The kids in the audience watching her were too young to have seen Princess Diaries in theaters. They will grow up and see it, and they will understand.
