Anne Hathaway on How She Overcame Being a “Chronically Stressed Young Woman” in Hollywood

Anne Hathaway is opening up about how stress impacted her earlier in her acting career and how she finally learned to manage it.

During an interview on The New York Times podcast The Interview, the Oscar-winning actress shared that she has likely played “chronically stressed out young women” because she used to be “a really stressed out young woman” in real life.

“I was a really stressed out young woman,” Hathaway recalled. “And as a formerly chronically stressed young woman, which leads to, you know, all manner of things, I just remember thinking one day, ‘You are taking this for granted, you are taking your life for granted,’” referring to her career success at the time.

She added, “You have no idea. Something could fall through the sky and that will be lights out for you. So when I find myself, like, the old instincts rising, I just tell myself, I’m like, ‘You are not gonna die stressed.’”

When podcast host David Marchese asked The Idea of You star what was the source of the stress, she responded, “I didn’t know how to breathe yet. And that was really complicated. That was really, really complicated not knowing how to breathe.”

Hathaway explained that “literally everything” in her personal life as a young woman rising to fame in Hollywood caused her stress at one point or another, adding, “I was just very, very, very in my head, about a lot of things.”

The Les Misérables actress also noted that she felt “somatic” stress, which meant she had physical symptoms as well as mental.

“I was just stuck in this feeling,” Hathaway added later. “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. You drive yourself by self-criticism.”

However, she was finally able to change her mindset years later when she 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.”

Now, in her 40s and as a mother of two young boys, The Princess Diaries actress said she’s learned “to heal” her anxiety and “not relive it.”

“I work hard to just be present,” Hathaway shared. “Like I said, I’m more grateful. I’m more settled in myself. I’m less afraid of things not happening.”