Anne Hathaway has an interesting newish interview with The Guardian to promote her film Colossal. Colossal premiered at TIFF this year and the consensus amongst critics was that this is a bonkers film, but enjoyable and well-acted. Anne plays a depressed, alcoholic loser who returns to her hometown, and then… well, there’s a sandbox. And when she’s drunk and she plays in this one sandbox, a huge monster causes chaos in South Korea. Spoiler: she IS the monster. Anyway, in this interview she tries to act like she was so “extra” during her winning Oscar season because she had just gone crazy doing Les Miserables and she was pretending to be happy. Sure. She also has some interesting stuff to say about toxic masculinity.

Playing an alcoholic: “I have met a lot of addicts in my life who I have a lot of tender affection for. I love when stories present the opportunity to take groups that have been stigmatised or judged and then show the human side. I always look at them and think, “That’s me in there,” on some level.

Whether this is a film about toxic masculinity: “I’m glad that you used the word “toxic”, because it’s very important to say that it’s very different from male energy. Male energy is beautiful. Male energy is welcome. Male energy is necessary. Male energy is half the reason why we’re here. That said, there has been a perversion of the beauty of male energy into this macho ideal that I don’t think services anybody. In the case of Ghostbusters, the thing that made me so sad about that experience was that people seemed to be blaming the girls for the men who chose to hit the film that they were in, and I didn’t think that was cool. In terms of my new movie, what our director was saying was that he thinks this energy really has no place in our world any more.

Whether she’s sick of blockbusters drowning out the smaller films: “No. But you’re right that things are not working in the way that people want them to and there’s a need to reassess. I don’t take it personally when bad movies get made. It takes so much work to make anything. I don’t know where it’s going to lead to, and I don’t know if this movie is going to have an impact. I’d like to think it might empower people to take risks, but I don’t think we need to diminish one in order to celebrate the other.

Whether she’s seen the newly rebooted Batman movie: “I haven’t had a chance to see the films yet because I’m feeding a child from my body, and that takes up all my time, but I am aware of the reactions that various movies have had. I just think you gotta remember that no one sets out to make a bad movie and when people do, they’re aware of it.”

The craziness of her winning Oscar season: “I felt very uncomfortable. I kind of lost my mind doing that movie and it hadn’t come back yet. Then I had to stand up in front of people and feel something I don’t feel which is uncomplicated happiness. It’s an obvious thing, you win an Oscar and you’re supposed to be happy. I didn’t feel that way. I felt wrong that I was standing there in a gown that cost more than some people are going to see in their lifetime, and winning an award for portraying pain that still felt very much a part of our collective experience as human beings. I tried to pretend that I was happy and I got called out on it, big time. That’s the truth and that’s what happened. It sucks. But what you learn from it is that you only feel like you can die from embarrassment, you don’t actually die.

[From The Guardian]

I thought her subtle shade on Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice was probably the most tactful thing she could say. Clearly, she was proud to be a part of Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies, but no, Zac Snyder’s vision is full of lens flares, stupidity and Sad Batfleck. As for Annie pretending to be happy and that’s why “I got called out on it, big time.” That’s an interesting rewrite on that situation. I feel for her, because it’s not like she did anything “wrong” – she was simply annoying. She didn’t commit a crime, she didn’t bad-mouth anyone, she was totally professional. She just annoyed the sh-t out of everybody and it became a thing that she still has to talk about in interviews more than three years later. Poor Annie.

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