Definition
Anne Hathaway (born 1982) is an American actress who has won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, and a Primetime Emmy. She first gained prominence as a teenager in The Princess Diaries (2001) and went on to star in films including The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Rachel Getting Married (2008), Les Misérables (2012), and Interstellar (2014). Hathaway is known for her versatility, her willingness to take on unglamorous roles, and her intense preparation — she lost 25 pounds and cut her hair on camera for Les Misérables. But she is also famous for a phenomenon that has nothing to do with her acting: the “Hathaway Effect,” a documented correlation between media coverage of Anne Hathaway and fluctuations in the stock price of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company run by Warren Buffett.
Why It Matters
Anne Hathaway is the case study in how the internet decides who to hate and why. In the early 2010s, a backlash emerged against Hathaway that was so intense it had its own name: “Hathahate.” The criticism was not about her acting — it was about her perceived inauthenticity, her earnestness, her “trying too hard.” She was too grateful at awards shows. She was too prepared in interviews. She was, in short, too much. The internet turned her into a meme of the unlikable overachiever, and the backlash became so mainstream that Hathaway addressed it publicly. But the Hathaway Effect is the stranger story: a 2010 study found that when Anne Hathaway was in the news, Berkshire Hathaway’s stock tended to rise. The theory is that algorithmic trading systems, scanning news headlines for “Hathaway,” accidentally triggered buys of the similarly named company. Anne Hathaway is not just an actress. She is a glitch in the financial system.
Example
“He read about the Hathaway Effect and laughed. A woman’s media coverage was moving a billionaire’s stock price. Not her actions. Not her words. Her name. Her existence in headlines. He checked the dates. The correlation was real. The causation was absurd. The market was not rational. The market was a search engine with money. Anne Hathaway was a bug in the code. She didn’t know it. The code didn’t know it. Only the traders who lost money knew. They didn’t laugh.”
Related Terms
- Hathahate — The internet backlash against Anne Hathaway
- Berkshire Hathaway — The company whose stock correlates with Anne Hathaway’s media coverage
- Algorithmic Trading — The technology that created the Hathaway Effect
- Les Misérables — The film that won Hathaway her Oscar
- The Princess Diaries — The film that made Hathaway a star