Anne Hathaway is one of the most beloved actresses in the world, thanks to her iconic roles in the likes of The Princess Diaries, Les Misérables, and The Devil Wears Prada.
As she is expected to return to the role of Mia Thermopolis Renaldi for The Princess Diaries 3, many fans will speculate whether the character, famously a teenager in the first film and a young adult in the sequel, may have children of her own. Anne may know how to play the role of mom well, as a mother to two sons herself.
The Oscar winner aims to keep her family life private, only really comfortable about sharing certain details about motherhood and her relationship with husband Adam Shulman. That being said, there is no doubt that she is proud of her sons.
Anne and Adam share Jonathan Rosebanks Shulman and Jack Shulman, who they tend to keep out of the public eye; the former is eight, born March 26, 2016, while the latter will turn five in November.
Here's all Anne has said about motherhood, ahead of the release of Princess Diaries 3.
Struggles with fertility
Anne has kept it real when referring to her struggles with fertility over the years. While announcing her second pregnancy, she shared a mirror selfie in which she captioned the post: "For everyone going through infertility and conception hell, please know it was not a straight line to either of my pregnancies. Sending you extra love."
In March 2024, she confessed to Vanity Fair about the post: "Given the pain I felt while trying to get pregnant, it would've felt disingenuous to post something all the way happy when I know the story is much more nuanced than that for everyone."
Anne explained that she had experienced a miscarriage in 2015, at a time where she starred in Grounded, a one-woman, off-Broadway play that saw her acting out giving birth onstage every night.
Her sons' ultra-private lives
Anne is keen for her kids to grow up out of the spotlight, having only shared one photo of her son Jonathan on social media; she's never done it since. She shared a photo of her son as a baby, watching her give a speech at the UN.
Reflecting on this, she told Jezebel: "Almost as soon as I’d done it, I wished that I hadn’t," adding: "I felt like I had broken some kind of a seal in inviting people into my life. And even though I felt as though I had done it in as protective a way as I could, even though it was a moment I was incredibly proud of, I don’t know that I’ll ever do it again."
She later told Porter about the decision to keep her kids' lives private: "My family has needs, and one of the needs of children is that they need to be able to define their own lives.
"It doesn’t even occur to me to link the two up, except through gratitude that they serve each other so beautifully. But they serve each other through me, and not through a space that’s outside of myself."
Believing in Santa Claus
The actress revealed that when it comes to Christmas, her kids are at that perfect stage where they believe in Santa Claus — which makes managing their behavior a lot easier.
"This is the first year he's really believed in Santa Claus," Hathaway said of Jonathan back in 2021. "We were driving in the car… and the baby is crying because he wants the cracker that the 4-year-old has, and the 4-year-old will not give him a cracker."
So Anne had this "spark," as she told her son: "''Okay, Johnny, but what about Santa?' His hand shot out straight towards me, I had the entire box of crackers suddenly, there was no argument. Adam and I turned to each other and we went, 'Oh my God, this is so powerful.'"
Getting into the Halloween spirit
Back in 2020, Anne revealed that her sons had got really into Halloween, especially as her eldest was into the Cars movie franchise.
"So he is going to be Lightning McQueen and Adam will be Doc Hudson,” Anne told Drew Barrymore. "And Jack, who's 11 months old, is climbing on everything, so he's going to be a monkey. And I'm going to be holding him all night, so I will be a tree."
SingingMany fans may remember that Anne has an amazing soprano singing voice, recognizable in the likes of Ella Enchanted and Les Misérables. But according to the veteran actress, her son is just not that into her singing.
"My son hates my singing voice," The star admitted to Extra in October 2019. "Right now, he is very into 'The Lion King.' He's Simba, of course, and my husband is Mufasa. I am Zazu. I am the annoying, nasal, officious Zazu, so I am allowed to sing now, but only as a nasal British man."