For whatever reason, the public perception of Anne Hathaway shifted after she won a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her performance in Les Miserable, resulting in a lot of negativity online.
During an interview with Vanity Fair, Hathaway looks back on this time and reveals that her "toxic online identity" actually began to have an impact on her career.
After losing out on some roles (she doesn't reveal which ones), Hathaway landed a supporting part in Christopher Nolan's sci-fi epic, Interstellar.
“A lot of people wouldn’t give me roles because they were so concerned about how toxic my identity had become online. I had an angel in Christopher Nolan, who did not care about that and gave me one of the most beautiful roles I’ve had in one of the best films that I’ve been a part of.”
Hathaway played NASA scientist Dr. Amelia Brand in the movie, having previously worked with Nolan in The Dark Knight Rises.
“I don’t know if he knew that he was backing me at the time, but it had that effect,” she added. “And my career did not lose momentum the way it could have if he hadn’t backed me.”
Hathaway admits that she “doesn’t love to look back on the time when people mocked her,” but feels that she did ultimately come out of the experience a more confident person and actor.
“Humiliation is such a rough thing to go through. The key is to not let it close you down. You have to stay bold, and it can be hard because you’re like, ‘If I stay safe, if I hug the middle, if I don’t draw too much attention to myself, it won’t hurt.’ But if you want to do that, don’t be an actor. You’re a tightrope walker. You’re a daredevil. You’re asking people to invest their time and their money and their attention and their care into you. So you have to give them something worth all of those things. And if it’s not costing you anything, what are you really offering?”
You can check out the full interview along with Hathaway's photoshoot at the link below.