“I HAD TO LEARN HOW TO NAVIGATE MY WAY THROUGH HOLLYWOOD.”

homophobe who described his affair with an adolescent girl as a relationship between two people “in their prime” – when she was 17 and he was 45. In terms of his (mis)treatment of women, Picasso has been termed “the Harvey Weinstein of his time”.

Despite online trolling and countless attacks hurled her way over the years, Hathaway hasn’t eschewed social media. But as a mum, how will she protect her children from engaging with it in a way that could be harmful?

She takes a breath. “So, when my son started to walk, I learned that I couldn’t leave a knife at the edge of the counter. I had to put it out of his reach until he was old enough to respect that there was a dangerous aspect to it. I feel very much that way about social media,” she says.

“I think there’s nothing inherently wrong with it, and I am going to paraphrase Desmond Tutu, where he said that religion is like a knife – it’s very good when you use it to cut a slice of bread for someone who is hungry, it’s very bad when you use it to kill someone. I feel social media is the same thing. It’s what we make of it.”

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

She is realistic, though, about the level of control she’ll be able to assert once her children reach school age.

“Ultimately and inevitably, I will have very little control over the way my children engage with it. All I can do is make sure they know how to engage with the natural world and that periods away from a computer or phone don’t give them a sense of anxiety,” she says.

“It’s also important they experience the pleasure of being bored and finding their way through the other side of it, figuring out how to get themselves un-bored. Ultimately, I hope it doesn’t hurt them, I hope it doesn’t hurt anybody and I hope we get to a point where we can figure out how to live with it without hurting ourselves.”

One of her own worst incidences of being bullied online came when she was named one of the worstdressed actresses at the 2019 Golden Globe Awards for her Elie Saab metallic leopard print gown. “Hey, I was only voted ‘Worst Dressed’ by some!” she corrects me, laughing, evidence indeed of that thick skin she had mentioned earlier. She sighs. “I wanted to take a risk and didn’t want to choose anything too serious, and actually I thought it would be a fun reference for drag queens. I’m serious about that,” she assures, being a huge fan of TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race. “I said to my stylist afterwards, ‘Is your phone blowing up, because mine is?’ And he told me, ‘The people that loved it, loved it, and the people that didn’t, didn’t.’” She shrugs her shoulders. “I’m okay with that.”

Hathaway has also used social media to her benefit. She announced her second pregnancy via Instagram, for example, in a post that read: “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.”

Her comment was unusual because she has never been especially open about her personal life, yet felt compelled to come forward about such a personal struggle.

She nods. “Well, I was trying to be sensitive of people’s feelings because I think one of the things that we are becoming more aware of in the modern landscape is how much more room there is for sensitivity. Each time I was trying to get pregnant, and it wasn’t going my way, I would understand on some intellectual level that other people’s pregnancies weren’t there to torment me,” she chuckles.

“But it does feel a little bit like that. The one comment I hated the most was, ‘What’s taking so long?’ So, I was thinking about that one Instagram follower who was in hell and couldn’t figure out why it’s not happening for her, and she was going to see my announcement, which would make her feel worse. And so I just wanted to include her. I just wanted to say, ‘I see you. This wasn’t as easy for me as it looks.’”

Her candour has won her deserved respect. “A lot of women have reached out to me to say how ‘seen’ they felt, so I’m really happy that I can just be there for them.”

And who was there for Hathaway during her own difficulties while trying to get pregnant? “The women in my life helped me through it, my

Hathaway has made two

Princess Diaries movies.

husband absolutely, absolutely, helped me. He was there every step of the way.” She pauses. “I think that there’s a one-size-fits-all narrative and a narrative that really only wants to focus on the happy moment, but it’s just not the whole story.

TELLING THE TRUTH

“And I think that by leaving out the sad part of the story, we wind up making women feel isolated, we wind up making people feel lonely, and do wind up making women feel like it’s all their fault. And I’m just tired of that story; I’m just tired of it because it’s not the truth.” Her gaze is still and intense. “And I like the truth.”

She has several projects on the boil, and her next one, The Last Thing He Wanted, is an adaptation of Joan Didion’s 1996 novel. “I play a woman named Elena McMahon. She’s a journalist who is trying to investigate links between the Reagan Administration and the Iran-Contra Affair. After that I have the Sesame Street movie coming out,” she grins.

When she’s not working and has time, she loves to go to the beach, or “God’s bathtub” as she refers to it. But can she really have an enjoyable day by the ocean like the rest of us?

“Oh, it’s a private beach, dahling,” she jokes. “Well, look, I’ve been doing this for a minute now so I know where you get hounded and I know where you don’t, so you go to the places where you don’t,” she says, matter-offactly. Her publicist enters the room at this point, signalling the interview has come to an end, and Hathaway rises from her chair, but not without a last offering. “Well, the beach is semiprivate,” she smiles. “I’m not Julia Roberts, after all.”