Anne Hathaway has revealed that director Christopher Nolan played a significant role in salvaging her career amid public backlash following her Oscar win for "Les Misérables."
During an interview with Vanity Fair, Hathaway recounted being widely ridiculed online at the time, recalling an instance when she searched her name following her Oscar win only to find a top search result titled: "Why does everyone hate Anne Hathaway?"
"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. "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 is referring to her role as NASA scientist Dr. Amelia Brand in Christopher Nolan's 2014 space epic "Interstellar." Before this, she earned acclaim as Selina Kyle in Nolan's 2012 film "The Dark Knight Rises."
However, despite this success, Hathaway faced online criticism during her Oscar campaign for "Les Misérables" in late 2012.
"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," Hathaway said about Nolan.
"Humiliation is such a rough thing to go through," she added. "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?"
Hathaway previously opened up about coping with the online backlash in an interview with The Sun back in 2021, saying that it forced her to build her self-confidence.
"I really don't want to dredge up the past but I did have my monster out there, I did have the internet turn on me and hate me and it was like a whole big thing," Hathaway said at the time. "And it was a really good thing for me personally. You can be incredibly empowered because of those things. So I guess what I'd say is when the bad [expletive] happens, don't fear it — just go with it, flow with it."