Anne Hathaway Recalls the Pain of Suffering a Miscarriage

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links."

Anne Hathaway, now a mom of two, is remembering a painful time in her life: nearly a decade ago, when she suffered a miscarriage.

In a new cover story for Vanity Fair, the actor recalls her first pregnancy, in 2015, which heartbreakingly did not result in a baby.

“The first time it didn’t work out for me,” she told the magazine of her pregnancy. “I was doing a play and I had to give birth onstage every night.” The play was Grounded, a one-woman show about a U.S. Air Force pilot whose duties are diminished when she gets pregnant, and suffers emotional distress due to the demotion. It ran for six weeks, starting in April 2015.

“It was too much to keep it in when I was onstage pretending everything was fine. I had to keep it real,” Hathaway continued. “So when it did go well for me, having been on the other side of it—where you have to have the grace to be happy for someone—I wanted to let my sisters know, ‘You don’t have to always be graceful. I see you and I’ve been you.’ ”

“It’s really hard to want something so much and to wonder if you’re doing something wrong,” she said.

The actor said the lack of information about miscarriages and lack of support for anyone who’s had one often lead women to feel scared and alone. That’s why in 2019, she decided to speak up about her experience with fertility troubles for the first time. In an Instagram post featuring a photo of herself pregnant with her second child, she candidly wrote: “It’s not for a movie...⁣⁣#2⁣ All kidding aside, for everyone going through infertility and conception hell, please know it was not a straight line to either of my pregnancies. Sending you extra love 💕.”

Explaining her message, Hathaway told Vanity Fair, “I thought, where is this information? Why are we feeling so unnecessarily isolated?” She added, “That’s where we take on damage. So I decided that I was going to talk about it. The thing that broke my heart, blew my mind, and gave me hope was that for three years after, almost daily, a woman came up to me in tears and I would just hold her, because she was carrying this [pain] around and suddenly it wasn’t all hers anymore.”

Hathaway and husband Adam Shulman have been married since 2012 and have two sons: Jonathan, seven, and Jack, three.

You Might Also Like

• 4 Investment-Worthy Skincare Finds From Sephora

• The 17 Best Retinol Creams Worth Adding to Your Skin Care Routine