Anna Hathaway is getting candid about her sobriety.
Hathaway, 41, was asked by The New York Times about her what middle age means to her, prompting her to reveal how she hasn’t had a drink in years, which she feels is more of an accomplishment than making it to a certain age.
“I don’t take it that seriously,” she said. “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. 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.”
The Oscar-winning actor, whose new movie, “The Idea of You,” is available to stream May 2 on Prime Video, has talked about her decision to stop drinking before.
She shared with Modern Luxury in 2019 that she didn't quit because she felt she had a drinking problem. Instead, it was all about how alcohol made her feel.
"I didn’t put it 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,” Hathaway said, as reported 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.”
She also told Vanity Fair in March 2024 that she "knew deep down that drinking wasn't for me."
"It just felt so extreme to have to say, ‘But none?’ But none," she explained of her decision to stop altogether. "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 continued. “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.”
She first revealed she'd stopped drinking in January 2019 on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show."
“I quit drinking back in October,” she said, noting she planned to do so “for 18 years” for the benefit of her son.
“I’m going to stop drinking while my son’s living in my house just because I don’t totally love the way I do it, and he’s getting to an age where he really does need me all the time in the morning.”
At that time, she and husband Adam Shulman had one son, born in 2016. In 2019, after her appearance on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” they welcomed a second son.
Hathaway also said she dropped off her son at school one morning while hungover, an experience she regretted.
“That was enough for me,” she said. “I didn’t love that one.”