Last week, Nicole Kidman told a London audience that winning her Oscar in 2002 “was the epitome of loneliness”.
Now Anne Hathaway has revealed that, when she picked up her gong in 2013, she too was feeling very unhappy.
The actress had been honoured for her role of Fantine in the big screen adaptation of ‘Les Miserables’ - a performance for which she had cropped her hair, lost lots of weight and seen her character die a heartbroken prostitute pauper’s death on screen.
Now Anne tells the Guardian: “I felt very uncomfortable. I kind of lost my mind doing that movie and it hadn’t come back yet.
“I had to stand up in front of people and feel something I don’t feel, which is uncomplicated happiness.
“It’s an obvious thing, you win an Oscar and you’re supposed to be happy. I didn’t feel that way. 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.”
It didn’t help that she was suffering a backlash in popular sentiment at the time, after a decade of success. She says now of that awkward Awards Season which saw her pick up a huge number of gongs for the role but irritate onlookers seemingly effortlessly:
“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.”
She told the London Film Festival audience:
“Winning the Oscar was a turning point, but not in terms of my life as an actor, because it was incredibly validating.
“But it actually symbolised loneliness to me because I didn’t have anyone to share it with at that stage in my life.
“I thought then, I’m going to have to get my life together. I want to fall in love.”