Anne Hathaway, the new cover star of PEOPLE, says she used to be insecure and anxious but is an entirely different person now
Anne Hathaway, 36, has been starring in movies for almost 20 years, but she admits her time in the spotlight hasn’t always been easy.
“I did everything so wrong for so long,” she says in the latest PEOPLE cover story, excerpted from the latest installment of The Jess Cagle Interview (streaming now on PeopleTV), hosted by Editor-in-Chief Jess Cagle. Hathaway adds that though her career was flourishing, she suffered from “feelings of inadequacy, insecurity and nervousness and anxiety.”
To read the full Anne Hathaway interview, pick up the latest issue of People on stands Friday.
“I’m not big on looking back,” says the star of the 𝓈ℯ𝓍y new thriller Serenity, which is out now. “But I remember 10 years ago being so scared going into the whole awards season and doing what I thought I was supposed to do, so I barely ate anything at Christmas…I thought movie stars had to have a certain body. I was just smoking, just smoking my nerves away, and wasn’t nourishing myself.”
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Times have certainly changed since she first broke out in The Princess Diaries in 2001. Now married to producer Adam Shulman, 37, and a mom to toddler son Jonathan, 2, Hathaway says she’s finally come to peace with her fame and is entirely different from who she once was.
“I just figured out how to say thank you to life by taking care of myself,” she says. “By not apologizing for taking up space, which is not something I knew how to do 10 years ago.”
She adds, “It’s been a journey. I don’t look that different, but I just feel like the inside has transformed so much.
As for her critics? She doesn’t really care anymore if they like her or not, but she does have one thing to say to them.
“Everybody’s entitled to their opinion. What I appreciate is when the negativity has some intelligence behind it. What I don’t like is lazy negativity. If you’re going to take someone down, have a point of view! Be witty, maybe pun a little!”
