Why did Les Miserables make Anne Hathaway sick?
Anne Hathaway confessed that after playing Fantine in 2012's Les Misérables
she ended up so sick that she couldn't even enjoy her success.
This explains why she thanked Victor Hugo in his Oscar speech...
If there is a character that has filled Anne Hathaway with
glory, that would be that of Mia Thermopolis Fantine, in the film version of
Les Mis in 2012. But as much as it has led the actress to win her first
Oscar, basically for her performance from I Dreamed A Dream, that was not a
good time for Hathaway.
According to what she said in The Jess Cagle Interview of
People magazine, she lost 11 kilos for that scene and the result was not
entirely positive for her health. She “she had lost an unhealthy amount of
weight in two weeks. She knew nothing about nutrition. I appraised my body
and my brain carried the weight of it for a while. I felt anxious and lost
the whole time."
Don't miss our ranking of Anne Hathaway movies.
In the scene, Fantine has just been fired from her factory job
and has run out of money to support her daughter Cossette. Her only solution
is to prostitute herself and then sell her hair, and she still ends up so
sick that she soon dies, leaving Jean Valjean the responsibility of taking
care of her with her daughter.
So it's understandable that the performance required so much of
Anne.
“I had just turned 30, I had just gotten married. Even
the most positive things can be convulsive for her identity. So living those
moments without knowing who she was - and at a time when you feel like
you're in the eyes of everyone - was not a comfortable feeling. And I didn't
get to do what I thought I was going to do if I were to be around at a time
like this. That weight loss was not a good thing for my health in the long
run, and it took me a long time to recover."
