Anne Hathaway Oscars Odyssey campaign faces category call
Variety says Universal has yet to choose whether Hathaway’s Penelope in The Odyssey will chase lead actress or supporting actress.
By Georgia Hale · Staff Writer
3 min read
The Anne Hathaway Oscars Odyssey question has arrived before awards season has fully warmed up: will Universal campaign her as a lead actress contender or send her into supporting?
Variety’s Clayton Davis reports that Hathaway’s placement for Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” has become one of the first major strategy debates of the Oscar race. Hathaway plays Penelope, wife of Odysseus, played by Matt Damon, and mother of Telemachus, played by Tom Holland.
According to Variety, Universal is expected to push hard for the film across the Academy Awards after Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” won best picture and best director. Davis’s current projection for “The Odyssey” sees a possible ceiling of 17 nominations, while 16 would match the record Variety says was set last season by Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners.”
The studio is not expected to settle Hathaway’s campaign category immediately. Variety reports that Nolan typically stays away from awards strategy talks until after a movie has opened, with formal conversations involving the studio and talent unlikely to begin in earnest until later in the fall.
Will Anne Hathaway run for lead or supporting actress?
Variety says both options have a case. A category placement is the campaign lane a studio chooses for an actor, and it can affect which voters compare that performance against which rivals.
Supporting actress may be the safer path to a nomination, according to Davis’s analysis, partly because Academy history has often made room for multiple supporting women from the same film. Variety notes that supporting actress has had two or more nominees from one movie 37 times, more often than the other acting categories.
The catch is the win rate. Variety’s tally says that in those 37 cases, one of the nominated women won 13 times. When the film also won best picture, the odds were much stronger: six wins in eight cases, according to the analysis.
That matters because Samantha Morton, who plays Circe, could also be a supporting actress contender. Variety reports that Nolan has said Morton’s work drew an ovation from the crew on set, something he had not seen since Heath Ledger on “The Dark Knight.” Morton has two previous Oscar nominations, for “Sweet and Lowdown” and “In America.”
A lead actress run would carry its own headline value. Variety notes that no Nolan film has ever produced a lead actress nomination, so Hathaway would be attempting a first for the director’s filmography.
Nolan’s movies have produced four acting nominations, according to Variety: Ledger for “The Dark Knight,” Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. for “Oppenheimer,” and Emily Blunt for “Oppenheimer.” Ledger, Murphy and Downey won; Blunt was nominated in supporting actress but lost to Da’Vine Joy Randolph for “The Holdovers.”
Davis points to Blunt’s “Oppenheimer” run as the warning sign for Hathaway’s team. Like Penelope, Blunt’s Kitty Oppenheimer carried emotional weight in a large-scale film centered on a famous man, a type of role the Academy may nominate without necessarily rewarding.
Hathaway’s year is busy beyond Nolan’s epic. Variety lists “The Devil Wears Prada 2” and “Mother Mary” among her 2026 releases so far, with “The End of Oak Street” and the Colleen Hoover adaptation “Verity” still ahead.
For now, Universal’s choice remains open. Variety’s read is that supporting actress looks like the cleaner nomination route, while a win could depend on how Hathaway’s campaign shares space with Morton and whether “The Odyssey” becomes the season’s top Oscar force.
This story draws on original reporting from Variety.