10 Actors Who Scared Themselves
6. Anne Hathaway Was Terrified By Her Weight Loss - Les Misérables
Anne Hathaway won a well-earned Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as Fantine in 2012's Les Misérables adaptation, but the immense plaudits came at quite the physical and spiritual cost.
Hathaway lost a staggering 25 pounds to play the impoverished factory worker-turned-prostitute, subsisting primarily on a diet of dried oatmeal paste, and this rather unsurprisingly took the actress to a terrifying place:
"I had to be obsessive about it - the idea was to look near death. Looking back on the whole experience - and I don't judge it in any way - it was definitely a little nuts. It was definitely a break with reality, but I think that's who Fantine is anyway... I was in such a state of deprivation - physical and emotional. When I got home, I couldn't react to the chaos of the world without being overwhelmed... It took me weeks 'till I felt like myself again."
In 2019, Hathaway further discussed the massive impact the part had on her mental wellbeing:
"I'd lost an unhealthy amount of weight in two weeks... I didn't know anything about nutrition. I taxed my body, and my brain bore the brunt of it for a while. I just felt very anxious and very lost at that time. That weight loss was not a long-term good thing for my health, and it took a really long time to come back from it... And I was still really sick because of it."
Hathaway's career since has generally been populated by lighter fare, and frankly who could blame her?