Anne Hathaway Says Christopher Nolan Is an ‘Angel’ for Casting Her Amid the Hathahate

Samantha Bergeson
·2 min read
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Anne Hathaway says her role in Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” kept her career afloat amid all the “Hathahate.”

In a Vanity Fair cover story, Hathaway called Nolan an “angel” for casting her despite the rising vitriol online over her perceived “toxic” identity. And this was after she won an Oscar.

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“A lot of people wouldn’t give me roles because they were so concerned about how toxic my identity had become online,” Hathaway said. “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 continued, “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.”

Nolan and Hathaway previously worked together on “The Dark Knight Rises,” which concluded the director’s “Batman” trilogy.

The “Idea of You” star added that while the backlash to her persona was “rough,” she learned to “stay bold” as a public figure in the face of adversity.

“Humiliation is such a rough thing to go through. The key is to not let it close you down,” Hathaway said. “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?”

This isn’t the first time Hathaway has spoken openly about the Hathaway Hate.

“Ten years ago, I was given an opportunity to look at the language of hatred from a new perspective,” Hathaway said in 2022 during her acceptance speech at Elle‘s 29th annual Women in Hollywood event. “For context — this was a language I had employed with myself since I was seven. And 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 realized 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.”

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