Anne Hathaway On Asking Out Adam Shulman: “If We Don’t Like Each Other, It’ll Be 24 Hours Out of Both of Our Lives. And If We Do Like Each Other, I Don’t Know, We’ll Probably Get Married.”

05 Oct 2026, 20:12 · Thought Catalog

LOIC VENANCE / AFP via Getty Images

Updated 5 minutes ago, October 5, 2026

She told the story on the October 2, 2026 episode of The Drew Barrymore Show during press for her new thriller Verity. Back in 2008, not knowing many people in Los Angeles, Hathaway had been hanging out with Shulman and decided to call him up. She said she had a New Orleans premiere of Rachel Getting Married to attend and asked if he wanted to come along.

Anne Hathaway and Adam Shulman on the steps of the Palais des Festivals after the screening of ‘Armageddon Time’ at the 75th Cannes Film Festival on May 19, 2022. Photo by Loic Venance / AFP via Getty Images.

“I didn’t say date. I said, are you interested in going,” she recalled. Then a mutual friend phoned her, wanting to know what was going on. “She’s like, whoa, is this a date? And I said, I don’t really know. And she said, that’s what he said.”

At New York City’s American Museum of Natural History, November 18, 2010: Anne Hathaway, in a black strapless dress with floral embellishment, and Adam Shulman, in a black tuxedo, attend the museum’s 2010 Gala. Photo by Michael Loccisano / Getty Images.

The friend pressed: what happens if you get there and don’t like each other? Hathaway’s answer became the bet.

Caught mid-kiss beside a parked car on a sunny New York City street, the couple were spotted together on June 25, 2009, just a year after their New Orleans trip. Photo by Ignat/Bauer-Griffin / GC Images via Getty Images.

They’d met earlier that year at the Palm Springs Film Festival. On September 29, 2012, Hathaway and Shulman married in Big Sur in front of more than 150 guests, with the bride in a custom Valentino gown. She told Harper’s Bazaar UK in 2013: “I knew from the second I met him that he was the love of my life.”

At Milan Fashion Week on Feb. 27, 2022, the Giorgio Armani Fall/Winter 2022 front row hosted Anne Hathaway and Adam Shulman — the latter sporting tinted round sunglasses — as the two posed together. Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto / Getty Images.

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