Anne Hathaway Looks Back At ‘Hathahate’ Backlash After Oscar Win

When Anne Hathaway won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 2013 for her performance in “Les Miserables”, what should have been cause for elation instead led her to be hit with a wave of online hatred.

Honoured at Elle‘s annual Women in Hollywood event on Monday night, she delivered a speech referencing how she got through the “Hathahate” experience.

“Ten years ago, I was given an opportunity to look at the language of hatred from a new perspective,” Hathaway told the audience at the event, as reported by IndieWire.

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“For context — this was a language I had employed with myself since I was seven. And when your self-inflicted pain is suddenly somehow amplified back at you at, say, the full volume of the internet… It’s a thing,” she continued.

“When it happened to me, I realized that this wasn’t it. This wasn’t the spot. When what happened, happened, I realized I had no desire to have anything to do with this line of energy, on any level. I would no longer create art from this place. I would no longer hold space for it, live in fear of it, nor speak its language for any reason, to anyone, including myself,” she said.

“We don’t have enough time to discuss all the myriad causes of the violent language of hatred, and the imperative need to end it. Because there is a difference between existence and behaviour,” she added. “You can judge behaviour. You can forgive behaviour or not. But you do not have the right to judge — and especially not hate — someone for existing. And if you do, you’re not where it’s at.”

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Ultimately, she explained, the experience led her to an understanding of how to un-learn hate and “re-learn love.”

“Hate seems to me to be the opposite of life; in soil that harsh, nothing can grow properly, if at all,” she concluded. “I want to say: Be happy for women. Period. Especially be happy for high-achieving women. Like, it’s not that hard.”