Anne Hathaway shared a heartbreaking thing she had to do for a role, which included pretending to 'give birth every night' after suffering from a devastating miscarriage in real life.
The actress, who has starred in films such as The Devil Wears Prada and The Idea Of You, opened up about her miscarriage and what it meant to be working on a film at that time.
The 41-year-old Les Misérables star has two sons - eight-year-old Jonathan and Jack, 4 - with husband Adam Shulman, but before them, she struggled immensely.
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It was in 2015 when Hathaway was starring in a six week off-Broadway production of one-woman show called Grounded when she would have to do something so devastating for someone going through fertility struggles.
Speaking to Vanity Fair about the role, Hathaway explained: "The first time it didn’t work out for me. I was doing a play and I had to give birth onstage every night."
She revealed her loss to her friend only after they visited her backstage and she couldn't keep it together anymore.
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She explained: "It was too much to keep it in when I was onstage pretending everything was fine.."
The Princess Diaries actor added: "It’s really hard to want something so much and to wonder if you’re doing something wrong."
She said that after she opened up to her friend, she was shocked to then learn that many of her pals had also gone through similar experiences with fertility problems.
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She continued: "I thought, Where is this information? Why are we feeling so unnecessarily isolated? 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."
Four years later, in 2019, Hathaway took to Instagram to announce her second pregnancy.
She posted a black-and-white photo of her baby bump with the caption: "It’s not for a movie…. 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."
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Talking about that Instagram post, Hathaway explained: "It was more about what I wasn’t going to do.
"I wasn’t going to feel ashamed of something that seemed to me statistically to actually be quite normal."
She added: "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."
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If you need support and advice following a pregnancy loss, you can contact the Tommy’s team at [email protected]. You can also call them for free on 0800 0147 800, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm.
Britt Jones