Anne Hathaway is celebrating five years of sobriety after a decision spurred by an ugly hangover.
The beloved Princess Diaries actress, thriving in her forties, said it's a “milestone” that she has stayed sober for half a decade.
The 41-year-old Oscar winner spoke about her sobriety when she was asked what she thinks about being "middle-aged" and how being forty years old is a milestone for people during an interview with The New York Times.
"I don’t take it that seriously," she told the outlet. "There are so many other things I identify as milestones. I don’t normally talk about it, but I am over five years sober. That feels like a milestone to me."
Anne Hathaway said she's been sober for five years and called it a "milestone"
Image credits: Anne Hathaway
Calling herself a “semantic stickler,” the Les Misérables actress hesitated to call her current phase of life “middle age.”
“Forty feels like a gift. The fact of the matter is I hesitate at calling things ‘middle age’ simply because I can be a semantic stickler and I could get hit by a car later today. We don’t know if this is middle age. We don’t know anything,” she said.
Anne, who shares two sons, Jonathan, 8, and Jack, 4, with her husband of 12 years, Adam Shulman, first spoke about her sobriety during an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in January 2019. She revealed that her son was the inspiration behind taking a step back from alcohol.
"I quit drinking back in October," Anne told the former talk show host. "For 18 years. I'm going to stop drinking while my son's living in my house because I don't totally love the way I do it and he's getting to the age where he really needs me all the time in the morning."
The Devil Wears Prada star once said her last hangover lasted for five days
Image credits: Anne Hathaway
Later that same year, The Devil Wears Prada star told Modern Luxury that it wasn't "a moralistic" choice to stop drinking.
“I didn’t put [a drink] down because my drinking was a problem; I put it down because the way I drink leads me to have hangovers and those were the problem,” she told the magazine in April 2019, as quoted by People. “My last hangover lasted for five days. When I’m at a stage in my life where there is enough space for me to have a hangover, I’ll start drinking again, but that won’t be until my kid is out of the house.”
“But, I just want to make this clear: Most people don’t have to do such an extreme thing,” she acknowledged. “I don’t think drinking is bad. It’s just the way I do it — which I personally think is really fun and awesome — is just not the kind of fun and awesome that goes with having a child for me. But this isn’t a moralistic stance.”
The Oscar winner said one of the reasons she quit drinking was because alcohol was like a "wallowing fuel" for her
The Ocean's 8 ensemble member also spoke about her abstinence from alcohol while speaking to Vanity Fair earlier this year.
“I knew deep down it wasn’t for me,” she said. “And it just felt so extreme to have to say, ‘But none?’ But none. If you’re allergic to something or have an anaphylactic reaction to something, you don’t argue with it. So I stopped arguing with it.”
“It’s a path everybody has to walk for themselves,” she added. “My personal experience with it is that everything is better. For me, it was wallowing fuel. And I don’t like to wallow. The thing that I have faith in is that everybody else is going to have one or two drinks, and by the time everybody gets to two drinks, you’ll feel like you’ve had two drinks—but without the hangover.”
Anne’s latest film, The Idea of You, is set to premiere on Prime Video on May 2. The film sees her portrayal of Solène, a divorced mother who unexpectedly finds herself in a romantic relationship with a significantly younger famous man.