She was 25 and her movie was No. 1. Then the man she planned to marry was led away by federal agents. Here’s what happened next.
In June 2008, Anne Hathaway seemed to have it all. She was 25, and her spy comedy Get Smart had just hit No. 1 at the box office.
She had also been dating Italian businessman Raffaello Follieri for four years. He was charming and rich, and people said he had friends at the Vatican.
Then, on June 24, 2008, federal agents arrested him. Anne had ended the relationship only days earlier.
What the FBI Found
The Vatican story was a lie. Prosecutors said Follieri told investors he could buy Catholic church property at a discount through his Vatican connections. He even claimed to be the Vatican’s CFO.
He had no such power. He was spending other people’s money.
Prosecutors said he used investors’ cash to pay for his lifestyle, including $18,200 to settle a lawsuit over vacation expenses with Anne.
Then came the part that made headlines everywhere. In July 2008, during a second raid on his New York apartment, the FBI took Anne’s private journals as evidence.
Her most personal thoughts were now in a federal file.
Anne was never charged with anything. But she still had to face the cameras, and her biggest test was coming.
“The Rug Was Pulled Out From Under Me”
justjared.com
That fall, Follieri pleaded guilty to 14 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering. On October 23, 2008, a judge sentenced him to 54 months, or four and a half years, in prison.
Meanwhile, Anne was on tour promoting a small, dark film called Rachel Getting Married. She played a woman out of rehab for her sister’s wedding.
At every stop, reporters asked about the scandal, not the movie.
“It’s a situation where the rug was pulled out from under me,” she told W magazine, fighting back tears.
She kept showing up anyway. In early 2009, Anne earned her first Oscar nomination, for Best Actress. She was 26.
The princess from The Princess Diaries had become a serious actress. Then she had to learn to trust someone again.
A New Love and a Brutal Role
Anne met actor and jewelry designer Adam Shulman. He designed her engagement ring himself.
On September 29, 2012, they married on the coast of Big Sur, California. She wore a custom Valentino gown.
That same year, she took the role that would define her career: Fantine, the dying mother in Les Misérables.
She lost 25 pounds for the part. Her long hair was cut off on camera, in a single take.
She later told Vogue it left her drained, physically and emotionally. Her new husband got her through it.
The film became a hit, and the awards started rolling in. Then everything went sideways.
The Win That Turned Into a Nightmare
ibtimes.com.au
On February 24, 2013, Anne won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
She looked down at the gold statue and whispered three words: “It came true.”
The internet pounced. Critics called her fake, rehearsed and “too much.” The backlash got a nickname: “Hathahate.” Major magazines ran stories asking why everyone seemed to hate her.
Most of it was just mean. She had done nothing wrong, except seem too excited about the best night of her life.
Years later, Anne said she didn’t feel happy that night. She told The Guardian in 2016 that she felt very uncomfortable, because she was still lost in the dark headspace of playing Fantine.
The hate didn’t stay online, either. It started costing her work.
The Director Who Didn’t Care
filmofilia.com
In a 2024 Vanity Fair interview, Anne finally said it out loud. Many people in Hollywood wouldn’t cast her, because they were worried about how “toxic” she had become online.
One director ignored the noise: Christopher Nolan.
He had already cast her as Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises. In 2014, he gave her a lead role in Interstellar.
“I had an angel in Christopher Nolan,” she said.
She said her career kept its momentum because he backed her when others wouldn’t.
Anne didn’t fight the haters, either. She raised two sons with Adam and kept working. She said the key was not letting humiliation shut you down.
That patience paid off in a way nobody expected.
The Comeback, and the Secret Behind “It Came True”
www.upi.com
In 2026, the woman Hollywood once avoided starred in two of the biggest movies of the year.
First, The Devil Wears Prada 2 opened on May 1, almost 20 years after the original. It earned $77 million in the US and Canada and $233.6 million worldwide in its first weekend. Its worldwide total passed $647 million, roughly double what the first film made.
Two months later, Nolan cast her again, this time as Penelope in The Odyssey. It opened in July to about $264 million worldwide, the biggest global debut of Nolan’s career.
And Follieri? After four years in prison, he was deported to Italy in May 2012.
Now for the part almost nobody knows.
Long before Anne played Fantine, her mother, Kate McCauley, played the same role in the first US national tour of Les Misérables. As a little girl, Anne heard her mom sing Fantine’s famous song, “I Dreamed a Dream.”
So when Anne stood on that Oscar stage and said “It came true,” millions of people mocked her. They didn’t know the dream had started in her childhood, listening to her mother sing.
The Last Word
people.com
In 2008, the FBI read her diaries. In 2013, the internet decided it hated her. Both times, she kept her head down and did the work.
Life will sometimes pull the rug out from under you. Whether you get back up is up to you.
