Anne Hathaway weeps as Disney gives the princess her real crown

There was a moment on the Disney Legends stage on Sunday when Anne Hathaway simply couldn't hold it together — and nobody in the room wanted her to. Standing in a striking blue gown before a roaring crowd at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event in Anaheim, California, the actress wiped tears from her face and said, 'I am humbled and overwhelmed in this room.' It was, by any measure, the most honest thing the ceremony produced.

More than two decades after a wide-eyed teenager from New Jersey stepped onto a Disney set and became Mia Thermopolis — heir to the fictional kingdom of Genovia — Hathaway has been officially inducted into the Disney Legends class of 2026. The honour, one of the company's highest, recognises individuals whose work has made a significant and lasting contribution to Disney's legacy. She joins a class that includes former Disney CEO Bob Iger, Dwayne Johnson, Lin-Manuel Miranda, the Jonas Brothers, Jerry Bruckheimer and Alan Tudyk, among others.

Hathaway was only 17 when she filmed The Princess Diaries in 2001, directed by the late Garry Marshall and produced in part by the late Whitney Houston. In her speech, she singled out Julie Andrews — who played Queen Clarisse Renaldi — as an extraordinary influence, and credited her own family for nurturing 'a home where acting, storytelling and imagination were valued.' She also paid warm tribute to the man who introduced her to the stage: The Devil Wears Prada director David Frankel, who brought Vogue editor Anna Wintour along via recorded message for good measure.

Frankel's introduction reached past the glossy CV for something smaller and more telling: he recalled finding Hathaway crouched in a corner between takes on that first film, listening to Puccini's Madama Butterfly, leaning into someone else's grief to find texture she could use. It was, in many ways, the portrait of the actress Disney was actually honouring — not a franchise asset, but a craftsperson who treats feeling as work.

Hathaway herself seemed keenly aware of the gap between industry ritual and real life. 'As cool as all this is,' she told the room, 'just us being us is where I'm happiest' — a movie star at the summit of a glittering ceremony quietly relocating the centre of her world to the people who weren't in it. Emily Blunt, her Devil Wears Prada co-star, joined her backstage afterwards to cheer her on.

The timing of the honour carries a certain irony. Hathaway is being canonised as a Disney Legend in what is shaping up to be the single biggest commercial year of her career — and the bulk of it belongs to other studios. Her films have collectively crossed $2 billion at the global box office in 2026, driven largely by Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, a Universal release in which she plays Penelope, and The Devil Wears Prada 2, the legacy sequel that reunited her with Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci, and pushed the franchise past $1 billion worldwide.

Disney claimed the moment anyway, because the moment was too resonant to leave on the table — and frankly, they're entitled to. The Legend award has never been a box-office metric. It is a memory award, and the memory it is honouring stretches back to a teenager listening to Puccini in a corner, figuring out how to become somebody.

For fans eager for more, Hathaway also made a surprise appearance at D23 earlier in the weekend to discuss The Princess Diaries 3, directed by Adele Lim, which will see her return as Mia Thermopolis once more. And if Sunday's ceremony is anything to go by, the princess hasn't gone anywhere. She's just grown up — and the crown, at last, properly fits.

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