Anne Hathaway has praised Christopher Nolan for backing her amid an online backlash over a decade ago.
The actress was subjected to negative public opinion around the time of her 2013 Oscar win for Les Misérables.
However, she called Nolan an “angel” for giving her a chance in 2014’s Interstellar at that time in her life, especially as other filmmakers had refused to cast her due to the backlash.
“A lot of people wouldn’t give me roles because they were so concerned about how toxic my identity had become online,” Hathaway recalled to Vanity Fair. “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.
“I don’t know if he knew that he was backing me at the time, but it had that effect. And my career did not lose momentum the way it could have if he hadn’t backed me.”
Reflecting further on that difficult period, the actress admitted: “Humiliation is such a rough thing to go through. 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?”
Back in 2022, Hathaway opened about the backlash at Elle‘s Women in Hollywood event, saying that she “was given an opportunity to look at the language of hatred from a new perspective”.
“When your self-inflicted pain is suddenly somehow amplified back at you at, say, the full volume of the internet… It’s a thing.”
She added: “When what happened, happened, I realised I had no desire to have anything to do with this line of energy. On any level. I would no longer create art from this place. I would no longer hold space for it, live in fear of it, nor speak its language for any reason. To anyone. Including myself.
“Hate seems to me to be the opposite of life; in soil that harsh, nothing can grow properly, if at all.”
Earlier this month, Nolan won his first Oscar for Best Director for his work on Oppenheimer, which also took Best Picture and five further awards.
Meanwhile, Hathaway is reportedly being eyed up to star in season two of Netflix’s Beef alongside Jake Gyllenhaal, Cailee Spaeny and Charles Melton.