While Anne Hathaway rang in her 40th birthday in 2022, there's something else she's achieved that, to her, qualifies as more of a milestone: five years of sobriety.
In an interview with The New York Times, the Oscar winner, who is currently promoting her upcoming film adaptation of Robinne Lee's book, The Idea of You, was asked about her 40th birthday and her thoughts on "middle age."
"There are so many other things I identify as milestones. I don't normally talk about it, but I am over five years sober," she says. "That feels like a milestone to me. Forty feels like a gift. The fact of the matter is I hesitate at calling things 'middle age' simply because I can be a semantic stickler and I could get hit by a car later today. We don't know if this is middle age. We don't know anything."
Hathaway first addressed her sobriety during an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show back in January 2019. During her sit-down at the time, the actress said she had decided the previous October to stop drinking for 18 years.
"I'm gonna stop drinking while my son's living in my house," she said. "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 in the mornings... I did one school run one day where I dropped him off at school, I wasn't driving, but I was hungover and that was enough for me. I didn't love that one."
At the time, the former Disney star was mom to son Jonathan with husband Adam Shulman. The couple later welcomed their second son, Jack, in late 2019.
She later clarified to Modern Luxury, "I didn't put [a drink] down because my drinking was a problem; I put it down because the way I drink leads me to have hangovers and those were the problem. My last hangover lasted for five days."
Continued Hathaway, "When I'm at a stage in my life where there is enough space for me to have a hangover, I'll start drinking again, but that won't be until my kid is out of the house."
The mom of two is in star-studded company when it comes to sobriety, as fellow celebrities including Jessica Simpson, Eminem, and Chrissy Teigen have publicly addressed their own journeys.
"Not a drop of alcohol in 365 days!" Teigen partly wrote on Instagram in July 2022 to commemorate her own milestone. "I miss feeling loopy and carefree sometimes, but to be honest toward the end, it didn't give that fun feeling anymore anyhow. I drank to end crazy anxiety that later mostly went away when I - get this - quit drinking!"
As for this new decade of her life, Hathaway previously told ET some of her goals for this next chapter. "My personal goal is to surf more," she said. "My professional goal is to surprise myself."
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