Anne Hathaway has revealed that one particular moment in her new thriller "Verity" came dangerously close to derailing her performance - and it involved nothing more dramatic than a foot rub. The Oscar-winning actress, who plays the title character in director Michael Showalter's adaptation of Colleen Hoover's bestselling novel, said the scene's awkward intimacy kept testing her composure on set. The film opens in theaters today, September 30, 2026, through Hollywood distributors.
"Verity" casts Hathaway as Verity Crawford, a hugely successful author left unable to write after an accident. Dakota Johnson plays Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling ghostwriter hired by Verity's husband, Jeremy Crawford (Josh Hartnett), to complete the remaining books in Verity's lucrative series. Lowen moves into the Crawfords' home to work, and what begins as a professional arrangement turns into something far darker as she pieces together the disturbing truths hidden beneath the family's polished surface. The mystery-thriller runs 117 minutes and carries a 7.7/10 rating on TMDb.
Hathaway Says the Scene Tested Her Composure
According to Hathaway, the foot rub sequence required a level of physical and emotional discomfort that made it hard to stay in character. She described the moment as one of the trickiest of the shoot, not because of any technical demand but because the scenario felt so strange to play opposite her co-star. Staying locked into Verity's unsettling stillness while the scene unfolded, she said, took repeated effort.
The actress noted that Showalter encouraged the cast to sit with the awkwardness rather than smooth it over, a choice she believes gives the film its tense, uneasy texture. Hathaway has described Verity as a role that demanded she inhabit a woman whose charm and menace exist side by side, and she has said the foot rub scene crystallized that duality better than almost any other moment in the script.
A Best-Seller Makes the Leap to the Screen
The film arrives with considerable built-in attention because of its source material. Hoover's novel became a word-of-mouth publishing phenomenon, and readers have spent months speculating about how its central reveal would survive the transition to film. Showalter, known for blending comedy and drama in projects such as "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" and "The Big Sick," steps into darker territory here, guiding a story built on unreliable narration and slow-burning suspicion.
Hathaway leads a cast that also includes Josh Hartnett as the grieving husband whose motives remain murky, Brady Wagner as Crew Crawford, and Sienna Kulovitz as Harper Crawford. Ismael Cruz Cordova appears as Corey, with Irina Dvorovenko as Anna and K.K. Moggie as Amanda Thomas rounding out the ensemble. Johnson's Lowen serves as the audience's entry point into the Crawford household, a woman whose growing fixation on Verity's unpublished manuscript pulls her deeper into the family's secrets.
What Audiences Can Expect
"Verity" leans into the psychological side of the thriller genre rather than chase-driven action. The premise places Lowen in close quarters with a woman she has never met but whose voice she is being paid to imitate, and the tension comes from what Lowen learns as she reads. The Crawford home functions as a pressure cooker, and the film's marketing has emphasized Hathaway's transformation into a character who may be a victim, a manipulator, or both.
For Hathaway, the project continues a run of roles that trade on audience expectations of likability. She has spoken about the appeal of playing someone whose intentions stay ambiguous from the first frame to the last, and she has credited Showalter with creating a set where actors felt safe exploring that ambiguity. The foot rub scene, she has suggested, is exactly the kind of small, uncomfortable beat that makes Verity feel like a real person rather than a genre device.
Release Details
"Verity" is rated for mature audiences and runs 117 minutes. It opens in theaters across the United States today. The film is an English-language Hollywood production, directed by Michael Showalter and distributed domestically this fall. With a strong TMDb score already in place and a cast anchored by Hathaway and Johnson, the movie enters a crowded autumn slate hoping to draw both Hoover's devoted readership and thriller fans who have never turned a page of the novel.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
