Anne Hathaway: I've Been Sober 5 Years

Anne Hathaway is five years sober, the actor reveals in a New York Times interview cited by outlets including E! and ET. Asked about turning 40 in 2022, she replied, "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." Hathaway, whose acclaimed and highly anticipated The Idea of You hits Amazon Prime Video on Thursday, also talked about her decision to quit drinking in a Vanity Fair interview back in March.

• "I knew deep down it wasn't for me," she told the magazine. "And it just felt so extreme to have to say, 'But none?' But none. 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." She said that for her, alcohol "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 had also discussed hangovers in 2019, when she told Ellen DeGeneres she'd decided to stop drinking after having children. (Sons Jonathan and Jack are now 8 and 4.) She said she'd decided the previous year that "I'm gonna stop drinking while my son's living in my house." She continued, "I don't totally love the way I [drink] and he's getting to an age where he really does need me all the time," and doing the morning school run while hungover wasn't working for her.
• She reiterated that point in an interview soon after with Modern Luxury, in which she said her hangovers last too long (one, she said, lasted five days) and that she wouldn't drink again until "there is enough space for me to have a hangover"—aka, after her kids move out.

(More Anne Hathaway stories.)