The 'Interstellar' actress says she failed to shut out her haters before realizing that she couldn't because she hadn't loved herself yet.
- Nov 7, 2014
AceShowbiz - Anne Hathaway opened up about the backlash she received from internet bullies in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" on Thursday, November 6. The 31-year-old actress received a lot of hateful comments following her Oscar win for "Les Miserables" in 2013.
Ellen told Anne, "For whatever reason, and it's a small group, trust me, but they're loud. I went through this, and voices that don't like you and say mean things really stick with you for some reason, more than voices that say, 'You're great.' So, when that was going on after the Oscars, which you should have been celebrating - you won an Oscar! - and then all the sudden..."
Anne responded, "I had gotten out of the habit of Googling myself because that's just a bad idea to ever do that." She then recalled, "My friends and I had an idea for 'Funny or Die' and we wanted to do something on celebrity pregnancy rumors, so we just Googled pregnancy rumors and the story came up... The title of it was, 'Why Does Everyone Hate Anne Hathaway?' "
The audience then gasped and Anne told them, "It's really OK. It has a happy ending. Life continues."
When asked how she dealt with the cyber bullies, the "Enchanted" actress replied, "Well, I listened at first. I couldn't help it. You know, you try to shut it off, and I couldn't. Then I realized why I couldn't was I hadn't learned to love myself yet. I hadn't gotten there. If you don't love yourself when someone else says horrible things to you, part of you is always going to believe them."
"So then I was like, 'Okay. I don't want to believe these people. I don't want to agree with them on any level, and I want to figure out who I am. I want to learn who I am. I don't want to feel like I'm fragile every time I leave the house because I'm so dependent on what other people think about me,' " she added.
Anne said she then "just took a step back" and heeded the words from her "Interstellar" co-star Matthew McConaughey, "I just kept living."
"And, it's been a really cool journey," she continued, "I feel like I arrived in a place where maybe not every minute of every day, but way more than I used to, I have a tremendous amount of love and compassion for everyone else - and best of all I have it for myself, which I never enjoyed before."
