She’s one of numerous Hollywood stars whose appearance has become a hot topic of debate online, but now Anne Hathaway is responding.
The Devil Wears Prada actress, 43, has long been praised and envied for her looks, from her style to her long locks to her glowing complexion.
Earlier this year, though, some started doubting that it was all natural.
On Instagram in March, the Oscar winner shared a video of her hairstylist, Orlando Pita, revealing a nifty hack to give the illusion of a more taut face, essentially faking a facelift by hiding two braids near the temples and lifting them into the hairstyle, pulling the eye area back.
In the comments, social media users began asking whether Anne had actually gone under the knife, with plenty of quips made about how she’s barely aged a day since rising to fame, joking that she must be a ‘vampire’.
Now, in a new interview, she’s discussed how the rumours made her feel.
Admitting that the remarks were ‘distracting’, she added: ‘I wouldn’t say pointed. But we’re at a time when people feel very confident in assuming what they think is fact, and sometimes what they think is accurate, and sometimes it’s not.‘
Anne added to Elle magazine for its July/August cover: ‘My preference would be to never comment on anything and to just live in the mystery and not draw attention to myself, but the speculation has gotten so loud that you do feel the need to just get your truth out there.
‘And I’ll probably always wonder, “Should I have posted that or not? Should I have just kept going and done the thing that makes me happy and makes me feel more confident on the red carpet?”
‘But I felt like the conversation was becoming distracting.’
The New York-born movie star went on to stress that a procedure like a facelift is a ‘huge medical decision’ to ‘presume’ someone has undergone.
‘I wanted to show that, like, “No, I didn’t make a huge medical decision. It’s just two braids”.’
Still, the Princess Diaries icon isn’t ruling any future cosmetic surgeries out, stating that she ‘might still get a facelift someday’.
Having secured her film breakthrough in the early 2000s, Anne is now no stranger to criticism or gossip.
Reflecting on backlash and mean-spirited comments from her early days in the industry, she also said in the interview that her younger self was ‘really scared’, which made her ‘harsh with [herself]’.
‘I shudder at the thought that I might have inadvertently been harsh with other people while I was being harsh with myself,’ she confessed, adding: ‘I actually get nauseous thinking about it.’
As far as plastic surgery goes, this isn’t the first time Anne has spoken out about it, telling Express almost 20 years ago that there was ‘a lot of pressure on young women’, which, as any internet user will surely agree, has only intensified in the years since.
At the time, Anne said the high expectations and beauty standards become clear ‘when you first become aware of your own looks in relation to other women’s looks’.
‘You just want to be cookie-cutter beautiful. And sometimes you think, “Maybe I could change something about myself to fit that mould”.’
‘I’m no exception to that,’ she confessed.
She even said she wanted a nose job when she was younger than she was then, believing her own wasn’t ‘good enough’ growing up.
Eventually, though, she accepted that her natural nose is actually beneficial to her career, as it enables her to be more expressive and ‘change [her] face a lot’.
‘Your face needs to have character if you’re going to be an actor or you’re just kind of a face. You’re not really a person or a personality.’
Of course, Anne is far from the first celebrity woman to hit back at plastic surgery speculation, and she won’t be the last.
The likes of Kylie Jenner, Katy Perry, and Amanda Seyfried have come clean about getting injectables and Botox, while Bella Hadid has said she got a nose job at 14, Megan Fox got breast implants at 21, and Sharon Osbourne had a five-and-a-half-hour facelift.
But not every A-lister is happy with what they’ve had done, with the likes of Jane Fonda, now 88, keen to discourage youngsters from jumping on whatever trend they can in a desperate bid to stay wrinkle-free.
While she has had a facelift, she’s since stated that she isn’t ‘proud’ of it.
‘I stopped because I don’t want to look distorted,’ she told Vogue in 2022.
‘Now, I don’t know if I had it to do over, if I would do it. But I did it. I admit it, and then I just say, “OK, you can get addicted. Don’t keep doing it”.’
Her advice? ‘I want young people to stop being afraid about getting older.’