Anne Hathaway revealed she surpassed five years sober in a candid new interview that touched on the time she was the subject of internet ridicule, RadarOnline.com has learned.
The actress, 41, who tends to keep a low profile, opened up about personal growth and her upcoming movie for the debut of the New York Times series, The Interview.
When NYT's David Marchese asked Hathaway about turning 40, she responded, "I don't take it that seriously," and said that "there are so many other things I identify as milestones."
"I don't normally talk about it, but I am over five years sober," she said, "That feels like a milestone to me."
The Devil Wears Prada actress said that turning 40 felt "like a gift" rather than a label of "middle age," citing her past struggles as a "chronically stressed young woman."
"I just remember thinking one day, 'You are taking this for granted. You are taking your life for granted. You have no idea. Something could fall through the sky, and that would be lights out," she recalled.
"So when I find the old instincts rising, I just tell myself, 'You are not going to die stressed.'"
When Marchese asked what was causing her so much stress, Hathaway answered, "I didn't know how to breathe yet," adding, "I was very in my head about a lot of things."
She said she would rather not "go into specifics too much, because I like to keep my personal things personal," but admitted there was a time she felt "stuck."
"It’s that thing about,I want to achieve things, I want to grow, and you think mistakenly that the way you do that is to be really hard on yourself," the Oscar-winning star said. "You drive yourself by self-criticism. I won’t go into the specifics, but there was a moment in which I realized that in order to keep that narrative alive, I was going to have to deny so much."
"I just said: You’re just going to have to accept that if nothing else happens to you, you’ve had a really great life. You have been given gifts and opportunities. And for you to continue to walk on this path, not being grateful, I don’t think that’s really who you are."
"It felt like a light went on," she recounted.
Around the time she won an Academy Award for her performance in Les Misérables in 2013, Hathaway became entrenched in relentless online criticism.
The viral internet campaign, subbed "Hathahate," wreaked havoc on her reputation and even caused her to lose out on acting jobs because her identity had become "so toxic," she told Vanity Fair last month.
In the upcoming movie The Idea of You, Hathaway plays a divorced 40-year-old mom who becomes romantically involved with a significantly younger man, a singer in a boy band played by Nicholas Galitzine.
Marchese noted that Hathaway's character is "picked apart on the internet," and asked if her own experience contributed to her performance.
"Yes," she replied, adding that "from personal experience, I knew that everything we were saying was true."
The actress said the role "felt familiar."
"I recognized aspects of myself in her," she said, but remained tight-lipped about the situation, saying that "because of what I went through, I’m sensitive to the way it can come across. So I’d rather be cautious."
The film will be released on Prime Video May 2.