BURSTOscar-winning actress Anne Hathaway said she was negatively affected by online harassment a decade ago but credited filmmaker Christopher Nolan with helping ensure her career survived.
The 41-year-old star reflected on the drama during a new cover interview for Vanity Fair.
“All the advice that you’re given is to protect yourself. ‘Everybody’s dangerous and everybody’s trying to get something from you.’… People were advising me that I armor myself and keep that distance, and that I have two selves,” Hathaway explained.
“I found that terribly confusing,” she told the outlet. “So I don’t do it that way. I’m not armored. Which is a boon for acting, because your emotions are accessible. But when you’re criticized, it’s acutely painful.”
“This was a language I had employed with myself since I was seven. And when your self-inflicted pain is suddenly somehow amplified back at you at, say, the full volume of the internet…. It’s a thing,” Hathaway said of being criticized by the public and the media.
She said Academy Award-winning director Christopher Nolan helped her by ignoring her reputation. The “Devil Wears Prada” actress said, “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.”
Nolan cast Hathaway in the dystopian thriller “Interstellar” (2014) opposite Matthew McConaughey. “I don’t know if he knew that he was backing me at the time, but it had that effect,” Hathaway said. “And my career did not lose momentum the way it could have if he hadn’t backed me.”
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The vitriol against Hathaway began after she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2013 for her role in “Les Miserables.” Headlines dominating the entertainment news cycle pitted her against her contemporary, Jennifer Lawrence.
“Anne Hathaway can’t win,” one popular Buzzfeed article declared, dubbing the phenomenon of checking every box for being a successful actress but still facing criticism for an unknown flaw as “Anne Hathaway syndrome.”
Some other articles on the topic include: “Why Do Women Hate Anne Hathaway? (But Love Jennifer Lawrence?)” (New York Magazine); “Anne Hathaway vs. Jennifer Lawrence: Why we hate one and love the other” (The Globe and Mail), and “The Happy Girl vs. The Cool Girl: Why People Don’t Like Anne Hathaway” (IndieWire).