While many celebs choose to fire back at their haters, Anne Hathaway opted to ignore her critics—namely, the Hathahaters—following a tumultuous 2013 award season, during which the public's opinion turned against the talented thesp.
"What are we supposed to do—pretend like it didn't happen?" the 31-year-old beauty tells Harper's Bazaar of the endless backlash she received while gracing the mag's November cover in a gorgeous Giorgio Armani Privé gown. "People treated me a certain way. But I've grown from it. This whole thing has made me a way more compassionate and loving person. And I don't feel sorry for myself."
The day after the Golden Globes, Hathaway was Googling her pregnancy rumors for a potential Funny or Die project and stumbled across an article titled, "Why Does Everyone Hate Anne Hathaway?"
"Punched in the gut," she says, recalling how she felt upon first seeing the headline. "Shocked and slapped and embarrassed. Even now I can feel the shame.
"I was in crisis," she continues. "Now I'd be fine. I really would be. I'd let it roll off my back, but at the time I was still partly Fantine [her character in Les Mis]. I was still identifying with being a victim."
Just over one month later, Hathaway's career continued to triumph—she took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Les Misérables—but her public opinion only seemed to falter, and her Academy Award was completely overshadowed by the pale pink Prada gown she wore on the red carpet.
The dress was a last-minute decision, Hathaway explains, because her Les Mis co-star Amanda Seyfried happened to be wearing a "lilac version" of her first choice, even though they were designed by two different designers.
The night before the Oscars, "I didn't have a friggin' dress," Hathaway remembers. "Which I normally wouldn't care about. But I really needed a dress, and everybody hates me, and I just really needed a dress."
The next morning, the now infamous Prada gown arrived on the actress's doorstep. "I was like, 'Wow! I can do this. It's beautiful. It's appropriate. It's modern. It's minimal. I look in the mirror, turn to Adam, and say, 'It looks like my nipples are hard.' He says, 'You look beautiful. Your nipples look pointy. The red carpet's about to close. We gotta go.'"
While the thesp looked gorgeous as she graced the carpet, the apparent wardrobe snafu spurred a mock Twitter account dubbed AnneHathawayNipples.
The criticism did cause Hathaway to shy away from the spotlight for a period of the time with the actress telling The Huffington Post in January 2014, "My impression is that people needed a break from me."
However, she says that her decision to distance herself from Tinseltown was not entirely left to her discretion. "I had directors say to me, 'I think you're great. You're perfect for this role, but I don't know how audiences will accept you because of all this stuff, this baggage,'" she remembers of the casting calls after her Oscar win.
Currently, Hathaway is filming The Intern alongside Robert De Niro and she just completed Interstellar, which also stars Matthew McConaughey and hits theaters on Nov. 7. "Once it was announced that I was doing Interstellar, thankfully the phone started ringing again," she recalls.
As for the thesp's most daring outfit to date?
"I f--king think that pink Oscar dress!" she says with a laugh. "Now that you know the backstory, that was by far in a way the most daring dress I have ever worn. It maybe didn't look it, but that was it."