For a cool, elegant, A-list actress, Anne Hathaway has had her fair share of off-screen tribulations, including the arrest and subsequent jailing of her then boyfriend, Italian businessman Raffaello Follieri.
Following Follieri’s imprisonment, Hathaway surprised herself, as well as many others, by getting the laughs in first with appearances on Saturday Night Live and Late Show with David Letterman.
"That was how I got through my pain. I wrote funny songs about it," she reveals in the September issue of Marie Claire.
"That’s always been the way I deal with things. You make a joke of it. When you feel like a lot of things are out of your control, there is a certain power in being able to say, 'Ha! I’m laughing at it first.'
"There’s a line from the musical Gypsy that goes: 'Nobody laughs at me ’cause I laugh first at me.'
"It’s not that it makes the pain go away, but it does allow you to doggy paddle until you’re ready to deal with the pain head-on."
Hathaway is quick to point out that life deals everyone bad cards. "People deal with horrible things all the time. Downstairs in this pub someone has a parent who is battling cancer. Someone has just lost their job. You’re right. Life is really f***ed up and it’s really painful sometimes."
Although she has learned her lesson of revealing too much about her personal life, it is clear Hathaway is in a much happier place now, in a relationship with on-off actor Adam Shulman.
"Yes, I have a boyfriend. And yes, I am very much in love with him. But you do need to keep your private life private. Adam totally ruined my plan. I was really actually looking forward to a little alone time and then I fell in love like a fool!"
Equally passionate are her feelings for her role in One Day, adapted from the much-loved and bestselling novel by David Nicholls. It’s a film she fought for; her casting was far from a foregone conclusion.
On being handed the script, her manager warned her that director Lone Scherfig – whose previous work includes An Education – was looking at British actresses. He said: “Don’t fall in love with it because she’s not sure she’s even going to meet you.” Hathaway reveals “Of course, I fell in love with the story and with Emma.”
Although she is careful not to give too much of the plot away, Hathaway had a very emotional response herself to the story's twists and turns.
"I literally thought I’d misread it. I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. I was crying and I was gulping for air. Very few movies are honest about love."
As are very few A-list actresses. Bravo Anne.
The full interview with Anne Hathaway is in the September issue of Marie Claire, on sale from Thursday 4 August.
Photographs by Mark Abrahams.
