Anne Hathaway has opened up about the stress she encountered in the early days of her acting career and also about her journey of coping with it.
In an interview on The New York Times podcast, the Oscar-winning actress revealed that she has often portrayed characters dealing with “chronically stressed out young women” because she herself was once a stressed young women.
Hathaway recalled, “I was a really stressed out young woman, 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.’”
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.'”
Meanwhile the podcast host asked Hathaway, "What was the source of the stress?"
To which the star responded, “I didn’t know how to breathe yet. And that was really complicated. That was really, really complicated not knowing how to breathe.”
She further mentioned 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 shared that she felt “somatic” stress, which meant she had physical symptoms as well as mental.
Hathaway added later referring to her career success at the time.
She said, “I was just stuck in this feeling,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, The Princess Diaries actress accept the fact that she’s learned “to heal” her anxiety and “not relive it.”
