Anne Hathaway is officially chasing her second Academy Award. Universal Pictures has confirmed that the 43-year-old actress will campaign in the Supporting Actress category for her role as Penelope in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. The decision, confirmed to Variety on Monday, September 21, 2026, ends months of debate over whether Hathaway would compete as a lead or supporting performer.
The film has become a global phenomenon. The Odyssey has earned more than $1.6 billion worldwide, making it Universal Pictures’ highest-grossing film of all time as of September 2026. The massive box office success, combined with strong critical praise, has placed the epic at the front of the awards season conversation.
Why Universal Chose Supporting Actress
The category placement settles a question that awards watchers had debated since the film opened in July 2026. Hathaway plays Penelope, the wife of Odysseus (Matt Damon) and mother of Telemachus (Tom Holland). Penelope governs Ithaca during her husband’s long absence and fends off suitors.
The role carries real weight in the story, which made the category call harder than usual. Universal weighed both lead and supporting options before settling on supporting. The choice also avoids any category fraud debate, since Hathaway’s part fits comfortably within supporting actress norms.
Campaigning Hathaway in supporting positions Matt Damon as the film’s sole above-the-title lead in the acting races. It also pairs Hathaway with her co-star Samantha Morton, whose performance as Circe has drawn some of the film’s strongest notices.
A Co-Star Showdown in the Same Category
Universal will campaign both Hathaway and Morton in the Supporting Actress race, creating the possibility of two nominations from the same film in one category. This is not unusual for major ensemble films. Studios have pushed two actresses from the same movie into supporting actress dozens of times across Oscar history.
Morton, who plays the sorceress Circe, has earned widespread acclaim for her performance. She has received two Oscar nominations in her career so far: Best Supporting Actress for Sweet and Lowdown in 1999 and Best Actress for In America in 2003. She has yet to win an Academy Award.
A double nomination from the same film in the Best Supporting Actress category has occurred 37 times in the history of the Academy Awards. In those 37 cases, one of the two nominees won 13 times, or about 35 percent.
Chasing a Rare Piece of Oscar History
Hathaway already owns one Oscar. She won Best Supporting Actress in 2013 for playing Fantine in Les Misérables. A second win in the same category would put her in exclusive company. Only two women have ever won Supporting Actress twice: Dianne Wiest and Shelley Winters.
Wiest won for Hannah and Her Sisters in 1986 and Bullets Over Broadway in 1994. Winters won for The Diary of Anne Frank in 1959 and A Patch of Blue in 1965. No repeat winner has emerged in either acting category since 1995, when Jessica Lange and Dianne Wiest each collected a second acting Oscar on the same night.
If Julianne Moore and Hathaway were both to win at the upcoming ceremony, they would be the first pair of women to win a second acting Oscar on the same night since that 1995 ceremony. Moore is a prominent contender in the Lead Actress race for her performance in The Debut.
A Busy Year for Hathaway
The awards push for The Odyssey follows a packed year for Hathaway. She opened 2026 as the pop star at the center of A24’s Mother Mary, which underperformed at the box office but earned her warm notices. She then returned as Andy Sachs opposite Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt in The Devil Wears Prada 2, which has grossed $691 million worldwide.
After The Odyssey, she appeared in Warner Bros.’ The End of Oak Street, a 1982-set creature adventure where she plays suburban mother Denise Platt. Still ahead is the Colleen Hoover adaptation Verity, where Hathaway plays the title role opposite Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett. The film opens on October 2, 2026, and Hathaway also serves as a producer.
The actress is also expecting her third child. She told The Hollywood Reporter about her jam-packed schedule:
“When I got my schedule for this year from all the wonderful film studios that I’ve worked with, I saw it and I kind of thought I was being punked. But then they showed me that no, no, no, all these release dates were going to hold and I just said as long as audiences don’t get sick of my face — which I wouldn’t blame them, I would not blame them if they did — let’s go.”
Nolan’s Awards Track Record
Christopher Nolan’s previous film, Oppenheimer, won Best Picture and Best Director at the Academy Awards in 2024. Across his entire filmography, Nolan’s films have produced only four acting nominations. Three of those four converted into wins: Heath Ledger won Supporting Actor for The Dark Knight in 2008, while Cillian Murphy won Lead Actor and Robert Downey Jr. won Supporting Actor for Oppenheimer in 2023.
The fourth nomination belongs to Emily Blunt, who campaigned in supporting for Oppenheimer and lost to Da’Vine Joy Randolph for The Holdovers — on a night when Oppenheimer won seven Academy Awards. That is a scenario Universal and Hathaway’s team have studied closely.
The Odyssey is based on Homer’s classic epic poem. The story follows Odysseus, who spends 10 years trying to return home to Ithaca after the Trojan War. The god of the seas, Poseidon, does everything he can to prevent him from returning to his wife, Penelope.
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Full Cast of The Odyssey
The film features an all-star ensemble. Matt Damon plays Odysseus, Anne Hathaway plays Penelope, and Tom Holland plays Telemachus, the son of Odysseus. Zendaya plays the goddess Athena. Charlize Theron appears as Circe, Benny Safdie as Agamemnon, and Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra.
Universal is also planning to campaign veterans John Leguizamo and Robert Pattinson in the Supporting Actor category. If the film secures multiple acting nominations across categories, it could join a select group of films in Academy Awards history to achieve multiple acting nominations in more than one acting category during the same awards season.
Notably, only four films in Oscar history have landed double-acting nominations across two categories in the same year: All About Eve (1950), Peyton Place (1957), The Last Picture Show (1971), and Terms of Endearment (1983).
The Odyssey is currently playing in theaters worldwide.
Also Read: Randy Quaid Calls Anne Hathaway a ‘Horrible Choice’ for Days of Thunder Sequel
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