Amazon Prime Video
In the new movie "The Idea of You," Anne Hathaway plays a 40-year-old woman who falls for a pop star almost twenty years younger than her and eventually has to deal with the public backlash after their relationship goes public.
At the height of the discourse, Hathaway's character Solène, tucked in the backroom of her art gallery as paparazzi lurk outside, turns to her friend and says, "I didn't know my being happy would piss so many people off."
It's one of the most memorable lines of the movie, not just because Solène is recognizing the absurd backlash, but because it's something you could imagine Hathaway saying about herself not too long ago.
And in fact, she's the one who came up with the line for the movie.
"I think that one might have come from me," Hathaway told Entertainment Weekly. "But I just knew it was true."
She knew it was true because she'd experienced something similar to what Solène had. But instead of being harrassed over a lover, it was over being successful.
Kevin Winter/Getty
In the early 2010s, Hathaway caught a wave of abuse on social media due to her panned hosting of the 2011 Oscars alongside James Franco, fans bashing her casting as Catwoman in "The Dark Knight Rises," and (of all things) winning her best supporting actress Oscar in 2013 for "Les Misérables." The online toxicity towards her has since been dubbed "Hathahate."
Hathaway revealed to Vanity Fair in March things got so bad that it was hard for her to get work until Christopher Nolan cast her in 2014's "Interstellar."
The hard times have passed, but she still hasn't forgotten, especially when playing Solène.
"When you're watching Solène experience it, and you know that I'm a person that's experienced it, you can't really escape the film. It happens," Hathaway told EW. "And it's us — this is what we are doing. It's not some other thing controlling us; we are choosing to do these sorts of things and behave in this way."
"I know that a lot of people go through this," Hathaway continued, regarding online bullying. "It's not just me, obviously, unfortunately, so I think there's something really powerful — especially when I know that a lot of young people are really struggling with this in particular, and it's a lot of their lives and a lot of their realities — to say, 'Hey, it's okay, just keep going, and your life will grow beyond this and hopefully be more beautiful and more fascinating than you could ever imagine in this really painful moment.'"
"The Idea of You" is now streaming on Prime Video.
