Anne Hathaway has recalled suffering through a miscarriage in 2015 while acting in a play where she had “to give birth on stage every night” in character.
In a Vanity Fair interview published on Monday, Anne opened up about the traumatising experience that happened during the six-week run of her solo off-Broadway play, Grounded, which she produced and starred in.
Directed by Julie Taymor, Grounded followed “the life of a female fighter pilot in the Middle East whose unexpected pregnancy ends her career in the sky,” according to the play’s synopsis.
Anne explained: “The first time [being pregnant] didn’t work out for me. I was doing a play and I had to give birth onstage every night.”
The Oscar winner revealed that she was so overwhelmed by the loss that she had to “keep it real” with her friends about the miscarriage when they visited her backstage at the theatre.
“It was too much to keep it in when I was onstage pretending everything was fine,” she said. “I had to keep it real otherwise.”
The Idea of You actor previously alluded to her past experiences when she announced her pregnancy with her second child in a 2019 Instagram post.
“It’s not for a movie… #2,” she captioned the post, which featured a picture of a pregnant Anne. “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.”
Looking back on the post while speaking with Vanity Fair, the Dark Knight Rises star told the outlet that it would’ve “felt disingenuous” had she not been transparent about her struggles.
“Given the pain I felt while trying to get pregnant, it would’ve felt disingenuous to post something all the way happy when I know the story is much more nuanced than that for everyone,” she said.
“I wasn’t going to feel ashamed of something that seemed to me statistically to actually be quite normal.”
Anne now shares two young sons, Jonathan Rosebanks Shulman and Jack Shulman, with her husband, Adam Shulman, whom she married in September 2012.
Help and support:
- Sands works to support anyone affected by the death of a baby.
- Tommy’s fund research into miscarriage, stillbirth and premature birth, and provide pregnancy health information to parents.
- Saying Goodbye offers support for anyone who has suffered the loss of a baby during pregnancy, at birth or in infancy.