Actress Anne Hathaway is opening up about her health leading up to her forties, and what put her on the path to sobriety.
Ms. Hathaway revealed she is now over 5 years sober after a bad hangover back in 2018 led her to lose interest in drinking.
“There are so many other things I identify as milestones. I don’t normally talk about it, but I am over five years sober … that feels like a milestone to me,” she said.
“I knew deep down it wasn’t for me … my personal experience with it is that everything is better. For me, it was wallowing fuel. And I don’t like to wallow,” she said.
Looking back at her younger self, Ms. Hathaway gives herself grace, especially after reaching her height of fame so early in her 20s. She revealed always being under constant stress and how it impacted her perspective on life.
“As a formerly chronically stressed young woman, I just remember thinking one day, ‘You are taking this for granted. You are taking your life for granted,” she told the NYT.
Ms. Hathaway admits that she “gets in her head” about a lot of things, but with time says she is learning to cope and trying to catch her breath.
“You have no idea. Something could fall through the sky, and that would be lights out.’ So when I find the old instincts rising, I just tell myself, ‘You are not going to die stressed.’”
Like so many others in the industry, Ms. Hathaway dealt with body image and not being comfortable in her own skin. She noted there was a lot of “somatic stress there” in addition to other uncomfortable interactions when first starting out.
During auditions in the 2000s, Ms. Hathaway recalls having to complete “chemistry tests” with potential movie co-stars, at one point being asked to kiss 10 men at once.
Despite being disgusted by the request, she went along with the audition to avoid being viewed as someone difficult to work with.
“I was so young and terribly aware how easy it was to lose everything by being labeled ‘difficult’, so I just pretended I was excited and got on with it. It wasn’t a power play, no one was trying to be awful or hurt me. It was just a very different time and now we know better,” she said.
Over time, the actress put prioritizing her mental health at the forefront. In addition to sobriety, Ms. Hathaway made a number of lifestyle adjustments that were beneficial to her like not being active on social media.
“I make a lot of my lifestyle choices in service of supporting mental health … I stopped participating in things that I know to be draining or can cause spirals. I actually don’t have a relationship with myself online.”
Despite her life experiences, Ms. Hathaway is proud to be where she is today. Reaching a point others would describe as “middle age,” she describes it as a “gift.”
“Forty feels like a gift. The fact of the matter is I hesitate at calling things ’middle age' simply because I can be a semantic stickler and I could get hit by a car later today. We don’t know if this is middle age. We don’t know anything.”
The actress is known for a wide array of films but most notably “The Princess Diaries” series and “The Devil Wears Prada.”
