Anne Hathaway Opens Up About When She Was Mocked Online & the Director Who Helped to Back Her During That Time

On how she handles fame:

“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…I found that terribly confusing so I don’t do it that way. I’m not armored.”

On the period where she was mocked online, and the director who helped back her:

“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 [2014's Interstellar]. I don’t know if he knew that he was backing me at the time, but it had that effect and my career did not lose momentum the way it could have if he hadn’t backed me.”

On how she handles anxiety on set:

“Part of the way I can tell myself that I am okay is by having such a complete level of preparation that if I get a critical voice in my head, you can quiet it down by saying that you did everything you could to prepare.”

On early in her career:

“I had a horrible anxiety attack and I was by myself and didn’t know what was happening. I certainly couldn’t tell anybody, and it was compounded by thinking I was keeping set waiting. Now I feel much safer going to someone in charge, pulling them to the side, and explaining, ‘I’m going through this right now.’ Most people will sit there with you for the 10 minutes it takes for you to come back down.”

On humiliation:

“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?”

Find out which actresses almost had her role in The Devil Wears Prada first.