Anne Hathaway has revealed her devastation after having to act out childbirth scenes after going through her own miscarriage.
The 41-year-old star, who has sons Jonathan, eight, and Jack, four, with husband Adam Shulman, was in the midst of performing in a six week off-Broadway production of one woman show Grounded back in 2015 when her real life pregnancy ended in heartbreak.
‘The first time it didn’t work out for me. I was doing a play and I had to give birth onstage every night,’ she said, explaining that she told her friends the truth backstage after performances.
She added to Vanity Fair: ‘It was too much to keep it in when I was onstage pretending everything was fine. I had to keep it real otherwise….’
It meant when The Princess Diaries actress got pregnant with her second son in 2019, she was conscious of other people’s pain when she made her announcement.
Showing off her baby bump at the time, she wrote on Instagram: ‘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.’
Reflecting now, she told the magazine that she made sure not to paint her situation as something ‘all the way happy’.
‘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 explained.
She later added: ‘So 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. I see you and I’ve been you.”
‘It’s really hard to want something so much and to wonder if you’re doing something wrong.’
Anne was surprised when she found out a lot of her friends had gone through similar experiences, and she read a study which estimated that as many as half of pregnancies end in miscarriage.
Her newfound understanding convinced her to ‘talk about it’, and help people realise they are not alone.
She said: ‘The thing that broke my heart, blew my mind, and gave me hope was that for three years after, almost daily, a woman came up to me in tears and I would just hold her, because she was carrying this [pain] around and suddenly it wasn’t all hers anymore.’
Pregnancy loss helpline
For emotional support, you can contact Miscarriage Association’s pregnancy loss helpline on 01924 200799 or email [email protected].
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