Anne Hathaway opened up about motherhood and why she no longer strives for balance in her life.
In her April 2026 Harper’s Bazaar cover story, the 43-year-old actress admitted that she and her friends “feel very defeated by the concept of balance.”
She reflected on how her life changed after welcoming her sons Jonathan, 10, and Jack, 6, with husband Adam Shulman.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 star explained, “Before, there was this focus that was really uncompromising and uninterrupted. And I just can’t tell you anymore what life is like without kids, but kids interrupt you all the time.”
She went on to say that the idea of balance often feels more stressful than steady.
“If the weight shifts in one direction, you then have to bounce it up on the other side, and we find that it winds us up as opposed to making us steady.”
Instead, Hathaway and her circle of friends have embraced a gentler philosophy: “We’re like, ‘We seek to harmonize our life.’”
The Princess Diaries star has long spoken about how motherhood grounded her.
In a 2022 interview with WSJ Magazine, she shared, “I didn’t feel fully landed and fully here until I was a mom. It’s not like I was lacking integrity, but it made me want to be completely, on every level, true to my word.”
She added that becoming a parent pushed her to “stop any nonsense” and give herself breaks when she wasn’t being her best self.
For Hathaway, motherhood has reshaped her priorities, her sense of authenticity, and her outlook on life.
Rather than chasing balance, she’s choosing harmony.
