Anne Hathaway is an intriguing choice for Verity Crawford. She can make a woman feel emotionally accessible while leaving her intentions difficult to read. That combination suits a character whose private writing encourages other people to believe they have finally understood her. Hathaway gives us a face we recognize and a presence we want to interpret, then makes certainty feel premature.

Her casting also gives Verity the stature the story needs. Dakota Johnson’s Lowen Ashleigh enters the home of an established author whose career she has been hired to help continue. Hathaway makes it easy to understand why that absent authority still dominates the household. Even sitting silently in a wheelchair, Verity remains someone Lowen must measure herself against.

For me, the appeal lies in how many versions of this woman Hathaway can make plausible. She can carry the glamour of a successful novelist and the vulnerability of someone being watched in her own home. Suspicion has plenty to attach itself to. So does sympathy.

Hathaway Brings a History of Being Watched

There is a useful connection between Verity and several of Hathaway’s earlier characters. She has often played women trying to function under other people’s scrutiny.

In The Princess Diaries, Mia has to learn how to inhabit a public identity. In The Devil Wears Prada, Andy discovers how quickly appearance changes the way people assess her. Both films depend on the distance between how a woman feels and what others decide she represents.

Verity occupies a more poisonous version of that situation. Her professional identity precedes her. Her marriage attracts interpretation. Then a private manuscript appears to explain what lies beneath the whole arrangement.

Hathaway’s screen history makes that promise of revelation especially interesting. We have watched her characters struggle to be understood before. Here, understanding becomes something other people believe they can extract from her.

That creates tension before the story settles any question about her character. A familiar actor arrives with emotional associations, and Hathaway has accumulated more than one kind. Some viewers bring affection for Mia. Others remember how sharply she can play Selina Kyle.

Verity benefits from that crowded first impression.

Selina Kyle Is a Useful Place to Look

Hathaway’s performance in The Dark Knight Rises offers a particularly good clue to why this casting works.

As Selina, she can alter the balance of an interaction by changing how much confidence she allows someone else to see. Her apparent vulnerability can invite an assumption. A shift in expression then reveals that she has been assessing the situation all along.

The pleasure comes from watching another character realize they have misread her.

That ability is valuable in Verity, where Lowen keeps trying to determine what she knows about the woman in front of her. The audience is doing the same work. We inspect a look or a moment of stillness for information that might settle our suspicions.

Hathaway can make that inspection feel risky. Her face can suggest an active intelligence without explaining where it is directed.

I like that quality more than an obviously sinister performance. A character becomes much more interesting when you can imagine her noticing your judgment and deciding whether it serves her to correct it.

Stillness Changes the Way We Look At Her

Verity’s apparent incapacity places unusual demands on the actor playing her. For stretches of the film, other people supply the movement and conversation while she remains physically present.

That arrangement turns Hathaway’s face into something the audience studies.

The image of Verity seated in a dim room, with a pale blanket across her lap, has a particular discomfort. She belongs to the household, yet the people moving around her can begin treating her as a problem to interpret. Her silence leaves space for them to fill.

Lowen brings the manuscript into that space. Once she has read it, looking at Verity becomes an attempt to find confirmation.

Hathaway’s recognizability helps make the absence of an easy response conspicuous. We know how expressive she can be. A held expression therefore feels charged with possibilities, even when the image itself provides little firm evidence.

It is worth resisting the urge to equate physical stillness with menace. The tension comes from what Lowen believes and from the story’s uncertainty about appearances. A woman being watched while others decide what she is capable of can also look profoundly exposed.

Hathaway needs to leave room for that discomfort. Otherwise the mystery becomes a guessing game with an answer already written across her face.

She Understands Uncomfortable Women

Rachel Getting Married is another reason Hathaway makes sense here.

Her Kym can be wounded and exhausting within the same conversation. She needs understanding, but the people around her have needs she struggles to accommodate. Hathaway lets those competing realities remain uncomfortable.

That is a valuable instinct for Verity Crawford. This story places enormous pressure on the audience to decide what sort of woman Verity is. Every account of her behaviour seems to invite a verdict.

An actor willing to preserve friction can make that verdict harder to enjoy.

Hathaway has experience giving a character emotional force without making every action agreeable. She can let pain coexist with vanity or resentment. The result feels more alive than a performance that keeps asking viewers to approve of the woman before they understand her.

Verity needs that freedom. The role can easily become a collection of clues about guilt, with the person disappearing underneath them. Hathaway’s range gives the character the potential to exceed whatever explanation Lowen currently prefers.

I want to feel that Verity would still be difficult to summarize even if someone handed me a reliable account of everything she had done.

Her Glamour Gives Lowen Something to Reckon With

Verity’s success has to feel substantial enough to pull Lowen towards it. The house provides one kind of evidence. Hathaway provides another.

She carries the composure of someone accustomed to attention. That makes Verity’s professional standing feel visible even when the plot has pushed her away from her work.

There is an uncomfortable contrast between taking over an assignment and entering the life attached to it. Lowen can be hired to continue the books. Living around Verity’s possessions and growing close to Josh Hartnett’s Jeremy make that professional substitution increasingly personal.

Hathaway’s presence keeps the woman being displaced in view.

That matters because a glamorous character can easily become an image for someone else to envy. A sufficiently forceful actor makes the image feel occupied. Verity’s place in the household has a person attached to it, however Lowen chooses to understand her.

The Attraction Is How Hard She Is to Settle

The most interesting thing about Hathaway as Verity is the range of reactions she can sustain. We can find her imposing, feel uneasy about her and still hesitate when someone claims to have figured her out.

That hesitation is essential to a story built around competing accounts of a private life. Hathaway gives those accounts a human subject whose face refuses to function as a simple answer.

Her warmth makes sympathy available. Her command of calculation makes suspicion tempting. Years of watching her move between those qualities encourage us to look again.

Verity Crawford needs an actor who can survive being interpreted from several directions. Hathaway makes that scrutiny feel like part of the performance. The longer Lowen studies her, the more I want to question what Lowen has decided she sees.