I faced internet hate but turned it into a force for good, says Anne Hathaway
IT is 2013 and Anne Hathaway has just won Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars for her role in musical Les Miserables.
Searching her name on the internet afterwards, she discovers an article titled “Why does everyone hate Anne Hathaway?” — with comments from trolls scrutinising her face and saying she is “unlikeable” and “boring”.
At first, the horrified 38-year-old struggled to cope with the abuse.
Then she realised she simply needed to gain confidence and love herself so she could stop believing the cruel taunts.
Stunning Anne told The Sun on Sunday: “I really don’t want to dredge up the past but I did have my monster out there, I did have the internet turn on me and hate me and it was like a whole big thing.
“And it was a really good thing for me personally.
“You can be incredibly empowered because of those things.
“So I guess what I’d say is when the bad s**t happens, don’t fear it — just go with it, flow with it.”
Like millions of others, Anne was forced to go with the flow again when Covid and lockdown hit.
At least the experience gave her plenty to play off in her new film Locked Down, which will be released in the UK in the coming weeks.
Anne spent her lockdown in California with actor husband Adam Shulman, 39, and their sons Jonathan, four, and Jack, one.
She said: “Adam is great. If you’re going to be quarantined with another adult, my husband is the one.”
But she admits the family still struggled. She has said: “In the early days of lockdown we were all so overwhelmed and there was a lot to process and I needed a release but I didn’t want to scare my kids, so I screamed into a pillow a lot.”
It is a move she improvised in her new film, which tells the story of a couple on the verge of splitting up until Covid restrictions mean they are stuck together at their London home.
Anne’s character Linda, an American ex-pat, attempts to drown her sorrows with wine during endless Zoom calls.
Meanwhile, her angry husband Paxton (played by 12 Years A Slave star Chiwetel Ejiofor) stockpiles toilet rolls.
But when he is furloughed they put their differences aside to steal a £3million diamond from Harrods.
The film, which also stars Stephen Merchant, Mindy Kaling, Ben Stiller and Ben Kingsley, was made in London in just 18 days in September last year.
With no time for re-shoots, any lines the stars forgot had to be edited in later. But critics have praised the chemistry between Anne and Chiwetel, 43.
Talking about the tricky filming, Anne said: “There were 180 pages of dialogue. Normally you have about 120 pages and four months to shoot it, so this was a little bit different.
“It was seat-of-your-pants filming — it was exhilarating.
“Some people started smoking during lockdown, some people were drinking through lunch. We got to take our feelings and make a film with them.
“I was able to turn all of this rage and uncertainty and all of these feelings that we were just fighting our way through into something hopefully cathartic.
“We had to be Covid-tested and it was the up-the-nose test. Some people found that quite difficult and really challenging, but not a single person complained.
"They would have a physical reaction to the experience — it would be very uncomfortable for them — but they all knew it was what they had to do.
“We would be in hot rooms, they would be carrying heavy equipment, and they would not complain or take their masks off, because they knew it was necessary to keep each other safe.
“Nobody felt that more than me and Chiwetel, because we had to take off our masks in order to make the film.”
Anne was born in Brooklyn, New York, to actress mum Kate and dad Gerald, a lawyer.
And filming in Harrods when it was closed to shoppers took her back to her childhood — reminding her how her parents would tell her toy shops were actually toy museums because they could not afford to buy anything.
She said: “That’s what being in Harrods at night was like, it was kind of like the museum of super-fancy stuff.”
Anne got her breakthrough role aged 19 in 2001 film The Princess Diaries, alongside Julie Andrews.
More adult roles with nudity followed in 2005’s Havoc and Brokeback Mountain and 2010’s Love And Other Drugs.
The actress says she is fine with stripping off if it is essential for the role and admits she loved a screen kiss when she was single.
She said: “If you’re both unattached and you get along, of course kissing in a movie is fun.
“But you can never get truly deep down and into it. Well, I can’t.
“Jennifer Garner, now that girl can movie-kiss! There’s also full-on movie kissing — a totally different experience.
"But really you have to be Angelina Jolie to pull that off and still look good.”
In 2012 Anne played Catwoman in Batman film The Dark Knight Rises and between 2018 to 2020 she starred in Ocean’s 8, The Hustle and The Witches.
And she won an army of fans after her role in 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada.
But it was following her Oscar in 2013 that she received the online abuse.
For her role as tortured prostitute Fantine in Les Mis, she cut her hair and lost weight.
The strict diet and long hours left her on the brink of collapsing.
After winning her award, she admitted: “You’re supposed to be happy. I didn’t feel that way.
"I felt wrong that I was standing there in a gown that cost more than some people are going to see in their lifetime, and winning an award for portraying pain that still felt very much a part of our collective experience as human beings.
“I tried to pretend that I was happy and I got called out on it, big time.”
As well as her husband, Anne turned to the friends she has known since childhood to help her cope.
She said: “My oldest friendships date back to when I was five.
“We all make a point to try and get together at least once or twice a year and we stay in each other’s lives.
"Our phones have become such a godsend.
"You miss someone, you write a text, it’s not like this big heavy thing where I have to write you a letter recounting the past ten years. It’s like, ‘Yo, dude, what’s up?’.
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“I’m really lucky. And then I made a second group of friends in college and they’re my extended family.
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“That’s important for all the stock clichéd reasons of you want people who knew you back when and all that, but also just that instantaneous thing that your spine does when you’re with someone that you’ve had the luxury and the privilege of trusting, in my case, for almost 30 years.
“It’s like a particular drip that goes down your spine that’s so sweet. And I love that.”
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