Anne Hathaway credits Christopher Nolan for essentially saving her career amid backlash she received online.
In a new interview, the Idea of You star recalled that after she won an Oscar for Les Miserables and co-hosted the Oscars, she received a lot of vitriol, which affected her career.
“A lot of people wouldn’t give me roles because they were so concerned about how toxic my identity had become online,” Hathaway told Vanity Fair in a recent interview. “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.”
Hathaway refers to Nolan’s 2014 film Interstellar, where she played NASA scientist and astronaut Dr. Amelia Brand. The actress had previously worked with the filmmaker in 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises, where she took on the role of Selina Kyle, Catwoman.
“I don’t know if he knew that he was backing me at the time, but it had that effect,” Hathaway said about the director. “And my career did not lose momentum the way it could have if he hadn’t backed me.”
Hathaway went on to star in films like The Intern (2015), Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016), Ocean’s 8 (2018), and The Hustle (2019), among many others.
“Humiliation is such a rough thing to go through,” Hathaway said. “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?”
