Anne Hathaway feels she never would’ve gotten her part as Catwoman in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises if she played her role in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 4.
Hathaway was notoriously set to star as Felicia Hardy a.k.a. Black Cat in the Spider-Man film that never was. After the third movie premiered and let fans down in 2007, however, Sony eventually opted to reboot Tobey McGuire’s Spider-Man universe in favor of a new story starring Andrew Garfield. With no plans for Raimi’s narrative to continue (at the time), Hathaway moved on.
Ironically, Hathway would get a second shot at being a cat burglar as a live-action Catwoman. It’s a Marvel-to-DC flip that saw Hathaway starring alongside Christian Bale in Christopher Nolan’s third Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises. Interestingly, as shared during an interview with Josh Horowitz, she doesn’t think she would’ve landed the role if Spider-Man 4 had moved forward.
“That’s how I hold it. The way I hold it is if that movie had gotten made, I don’t know if I would’ve been considered because I don’t know if (Nolan) would’ve said, ‘No, no, she’s occupied in another universe,'” Hathaway said. “As an actor, you don’t know this on day one, but you learn to just go, ‘You know what? The right role finds the right person, and sometimes it’s you and sometimes it’s not, so when it doesn’t happen just trust deeper and keep going. Just keep going.”
She continues, explaining that at an early point in her career, she was cast in a musical that she eventually missed out on due to other obligations. Though devastating at the time, she feels Les Misérables would not have had the same impact that it eventually did.
“Funny enough, a career has something to do with you, but it also doesn’t have a lot to do with you, so you just gotta lean in,” she added. “Lean into it, lean into what’s happening, and go with it. Sometimes you receive praise and sometimes you get knocked down…but it’s your life, and it’s what you signed up for because you felt this thing inside of yourself that said, ‘This is what you’re supposed to do.’”
Elsewhere in the interview, Hathaway clarifies that, while Spider-Man 4 was certainly in the works at some point, she didn’t get far into the process before things were shut down. In fact, she never got into costume and never read a script past the audition process.
Today, it’s been years since Spider-Man 4 was being worked on, and Nolan’s Batman trilogy came to its conclusion more than a decade ago. Both properties have been reborn time and again in film, however, with Spider-Man expected to continue with the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s take and DC moving forward with Batman: The Brave and the Bold as well as a sequel to Matt Reeves’ The Batman.
Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.
Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.
