Anne Hathaway has spoken about suffering a miscarriage in 2015 while acting in a play in which she had to “give birth” every night.
The Oscar-winning star told Vanity Fair her first pregnancy “didn’t work out”, and adding, “I was doing a play and I had to give birth on stage every night.”
The 41-year-old actress was speaking about her one-woman performance in off-Broadway show Grounded – about a pregnant pilot.
The six-week run required her to act going through childbirth every night, and it was during that time she suffered a miscarriage.
Saying she “pretended everything was fine” during the show, she admits she told friends who came to see her backstage as “it was too much to keep it in”.
Hathaway has since gone on to have two sons with husband Adam Shulman.
After welcoming baby Jonathan in March 2016, she announced her second pregnancy in July 2019 in an Instagram post, but also highlighted her past struggles with fertility.
Sharing a photo of her with her baby bump, she wrote: “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.”
‘It would have felt disingenuous’
She told Vanity Fair she’d written the message because “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”.
Hathaway said she was later shocked to discover how common miscarriages are.
“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 said the reaction to her post “blew my mind,” with women regularly coming up to her in tears, years after she shared the message.
She said: “And I would just hold her, because she was carrying this [pain] around and suddenly it wasn’t all hers anymore.”
‘You don’t always have to be graceful’
She went on: “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,'” she said.
“‘I see you and I’ve been you.'”
Hathaway’s second son, Jack, was born in November 2019.
Meanwhile, TV presenter Lorraine Kelly has spoken about a miscarriage she suffered more than 20 years ago and welcomes the fact people are talking more frequently about the experience of pregnancy loss.
Lorraine Kelly says women ‘should be allowed to grieve’. Pic: PA
Speaking to Saga Magazine, the 64-year-old said: “Sometimes I wonder what might have been. You’ve got this parallel life that didn’t happen.
“I do remember vividly the time when someone said, ‘Oh this is very common’.
“They were trying to make me feel better, which made me feel worse. I thought, ‘Oh my God, so many people feel like this’.”
‘It didn’t happen for us’
Discussing conversations around miscarriages, she added: “I think it’s good that we are talking about things like this a lot more. We are more open, and you should be. You should be allowed to grieve and go through that whole process the way it suits you.
“Some people don’t want to talk about it, and some do.”
Kelly, who has one grown-up daughter, Rosie, says she didn’t go on to have more children as “it didn’t happen for us,” adding “by the time you realise it’s not happening… I was in my early forties, and just thought our time had passed.”
The Scottish TV presenter will receive a special prize at the Bafta television awards this year in recognition of her four decades in broadcasting.
Hathaway will next appear in thriller Mother’s Instinct, which is out in UK cinemas on Wednesday.