Alright, you can get that light out of Anne Hathaway’s face already, because she’s ready to confess. That Oscar acceptance speech that became the flashpoint around Hathaway’s label as a phony try-hard? The actress admits it was a sham, but only because Les Misérables left her in a suuuper-weird head space. “It’s an obvious thing, you win an Oscar and you’re supposed to be happy. I didn’t feel that way,†Hathaway told the Guardian, explaining that the experience of making Les Mis — wherein Hathaway chopped off her hair, whittled herself down to skin and bone, and bellowed her guts out while cameras swung in dizzying circles around her — took its toll. In Hathaway’s words: “I felt very uncomfortable. I kind of lost my mind doing that movie and it hadn’t come back yet. Then I had to stand up in front of people and feel something I don’t feel which is uncomplicated happiness.â€
I felt wrong that I was standing there in a gown that cost more than some people are going to see in their lifetime, and winning an award for portraying pain that still felt very much a part of our collective experience as human beings. I tried to pretend that I was happy and I got called out on it, big time. That’s the truth and that’s what happened. It sucks. But what you learn from it is that you only feel like you can die from embarrassment, you don’t actually die.
Let he among us who has endured Les Mis sans prolonged funk throw the first stone.