Anne Hathaway has opened up about the time she suffered a miscarriage while she was starring in an off-Broadway play.
In 2015, the Devil Wears Prada actress was starring in a six-week run of the off-Broadway one-woman show titled Grounded, where she played a female U.S. Air Force who becomes pregnant.
The show, which was written by George Brant, required her to act out a birth scene every night - and it was during this time that Hathaway experienced a miscarriage.
In the following year, the Hollywood star welcomed her first child in March 2016 and announced her second pregnancy in a 2019 Instagram post that highlighted her past struggles with fertility.
Check out the post below:
At the time, Hathaway shared a black and white picture with the caption: "It’s not for a movie...#2. 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."
In a candid interview with Vanity Fair, the Princess Diaries actress explained the story behind the post, sharing: "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 added she "wasn't going to feel ashamed" of something that seemed "statistically to actually be quite normal".
The One Day actress and her husband Adam Shulman have been married since 2012 and have two sons: Jonathan, seven, and Jack, three.
Hathaway told the publication that she had to deal with her own trauma of a failed pregnancy while channeling the trauma of a character who had just given birth.
"It was too much to keep it in when I was onstage pretending everything was fine. I had to keep it real," she said. "So when it did go well for me, having been on the other side of it - where you have to have the grace to be happy for someone - I wanted to let my sisters know, 'You don’t have to always be graceful. I see you and I’ve been you.'"
"It’s really hard to want something so much and to wonder if you’re doing something wrong," she added.
After suffering her miscarriage, the Interstellar star said she was shocked to discover how common miscarriages are and found out that many of her friends had had similar experiences.
"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," she added.
She said that for years after her Instagram post, women would regularly come up to her in tears, adding: "And I would just hold her, because she was carrying this [pain] around and suddenly it wasn't all hers anymore," she added.
If you or somebody you know is struggling as a result of a miscarriage, you can contact the M + A Hotline on 1-833-246-2632 or visit their website here.