Watch: Anne Hathaway Details How Motherhood Influenced Her Emotional New Role
Anne Hathaway knows a thing or two about being a mama bear—or should we say mama dinosaur?
Either way, when preparing for her role in The End of Oak Street—which sees her and Ewan McGregor fight to protect prehistoric predators to protect their family after their home is mysteriously transported to a dinosaur-infested world—Hathaway had a wealth of lived experience to draw from.
“I think it’d be silly not to pull from all aspects of your life as an actor,” the mom of two—who is currently pregnant with her and husband Adam Shulman’s third baby—told E! News at the film’s premiere Aug. 9. “Whenever I’m playing someone’s daughter, I definitely think about how my own parents kind of factor into that—same thing into all aspects of your life. But I think it’s universal.”
As she noted, that instinct to protect is ingrained, whether or not one has children of one’s own.
“You don’t have to be a parent to understand that when people you love are in peril,” Hathaway continued, “something deeper, darker, more primal comes out in you to try to protect them.”
As for what it was that drew her to the prehistoric thriller, which also stars Maisy Stella and Christian Convery, the Princess Diaries alum said it had everything to do with the man at the helm of the project: David Robert Mitchell.
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“It Follows is one of my favorite movies that I’ve seen in, I don’t know, this century,” she gushed of the 2014 horror. “I know that sounds really hyperbolic, but I just thought it was so inventive, and I was blown away by what he did with his talent and imagination and creativity and ingenuity on a movie that had no budget whatsoever, and it left a huge impression on me.”
The 43-year-old continued, “So, I asked if I could meet him after I saw it, and after we met, I just said, ‘Well, if you ever have anything that you think I’d be in any way right for, I’d be honored to be one of your movies.’ And then this one came out.”
And fans will get to see that decade-long admiration come to fruition on Aug. 14, when Hathaway and McGregor take on a bunch of dinosaurs to protect their kids.
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Thankfully, Hathaway also has the perfect partner at home in her husband of more than a decade, with whom she already shares sons Jonathan, 10, and Jack, 6.
“I am one of the luckiest people on the planet Earth,” Hathaway told E! News in July. “I met my soulmate, and we decided to get married and have a family.”
As she put it, life right now “can’t be beat.”
For more insight into Hathaway’s life as a mom, read on.
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