PEOPLE's Most Beautiful cover star, Anne Hathaway, is being celebrated for doing the most in 2026

PEOPLE Magazine’s annual Most Beautiful issue isn’t as popular as the Sexiest Man Alive issue that comes out in the fall but it has become a tradition – and this year, Anne Hathaway has been named The Most Beautiful.

The timing, of course, totally tracks. The Devil Wears Prada 2 opens on May 1 to kick off summer blockbuster season, which is a big deal, that a movie for women and girls and gays starring mostly women in the workplace is taking up a spot usually reserved for explosions and superheroes.

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But for Annie, it’s not just The Devil Wears Prada 2, it’s also Mother Mary, and The Odyssey, and The End of Oak Street, and Verity – five film releases in basically six months… Anne Hathaway is doing the most in 2026. And doing the most is what she’s always been known for, sometimes criticised for, and now celebrated for. We are, thankfully, well past the time where she was piled on for trying too hard. Anne Hathaway wears the attribute with pride, even if she’s telling PEOPLE that in her 40s, she’s learned how to chill. Not that I don’t believe it, I do, I believe that she’s chilled out in one respect: not caring that some people think she tries too hard. After all, they’re not promoting five projects this year, one of them being the return to a story that is pretty much pop monoculture, not just in North America but, as evidenced by Anne and Meryl Streep’s reception in East Asia a couple of weeks ago, a global obsession.

That said, the PEOPLE Most Beautiful (and also Sexiest Man Alive) interview isn’t necessarily known to be the most insightful. Annie doesn’t say much here that’s fresh, although I did laugh when she’s asked about beauty disasters – because her answer is so … of a certain age; relatable to those of us of a certain age, LOL.

“I didn’t understand that there’s a whole language when it comes to beauty. For about 10 years I was asking for my hair to be done a certain way, and it never went the way I wanted. And then finally I showed someone a picture. I had been asking for texture, and I meant that I wanted, like, loose soft waves, and it took me a very long time to figure that out. Now I always show up with reference images.”

Honestly! It sounds so simple since our phones are always on us now and we can always call up an image but there was actually a time when you had to describe a look that you were looking for and it’s true, Annie’s not alone in having the execution not live up to the vision because we couldn’t show and tell. Anyone under 30 right now doesn’t understand this, they grew up building inspo folders on their devices.

But the less superficial takeaway is what Anne says about the year she’s having, and the work that happened beforehand in order to get here, and how much help she had, specifically shouting out her husband’s contributions.

“He supports me completely. This year in particular was unusual. He and I both know that it’s probably never going to happen like this again. And the way he stepped up, I mean, in every possible way, he’s the most extraordinary person I’ve ever met.

I’m so lucky that he’s my partner that I spend my life with. If I didn’t know that before this past year, I think I really know it now because with absolutely everything he’s just, he’s on it. He holds it down. I hope that doesn’t sound like I’m bragging, but he’s a dream partner to me.

It’s one thing to have dreams. It’s another thing to have somebody who helps you achieve them. I absolutely would not be able to have achieved what I’ve done without my husband.”

So, basically, Annie’s husband was her wife – a “wife” as described by Judy Brady in her seminal essay, “I Want a Wife”, published in 1971 in New York Magazine. Duana and I talk about this all the time, how we should all have a wife, no matter how we identify. And to be clear, the way we’re talking about a “wife” here, inspired by Judy Brady, is genderless, not specific to women but to a role, to a set of responsibilities. Certainly, throughout history, women have mostly assumed those responsibilities, but Judy’s essay imagined a reality in which “wife” could be a title that could be held by anyone… not just a woman.

And Anne Hathaway’s description of how her husband is her “dream partner” is pretty much what Judy wrote in her piece about the impact a wife makes on a family. What Anne has experienced – and is grateful for – isn’t uncommon anymore. I live a similar experience, as do many other women I know… even though it is being discouraged, actively, in the manosphere, in the trad wife movement, at the highest levels of government. Annie says that she’s married to somebody who has helped her achieve her dreams. To quote Judy Brady’s final line in her essay, “My God, who wouldn’t want a wife?”