As if Anne Hathaway wasn’t already an icon, the Hollywood star recently revealed she was secretly blind in one eye for one of the biggest decades of her career.
The 43-year-old actor has had some huge career highlights over the years, from starring in the best movies of the early 00s (Princess Diaries, The Devil Wears Prada) to landing an Oscar for her turn as Fantine in Les Misérables.
As she entered her 30s, she was on the up and up, and had landed a coveted role in what would go on to be one of the most beloved sci-fi movies of all time – Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar.
It kicked off a decade of other fondly remembered projects, including The Intern opposite Robert De Niro and Ocean’s Eight.
In a recent interview, however, she opened up about how she spent ‘ages 30 to 40’ legally blind in her left eye, which would have covered the time she spent filming all these projects.
Sharing that she would be ‘so sad’ if she ever lost her sight, she told the New York Times Popcast she was ‘half blind for 10 years’.
She explained: ‘I had an early onset cataract and it impacted my vision so much that I was basically legally blind in my left eye and I wound up getting surgery.
‘And I didn’t realise how bad it had gotten until I could finally see the full spectrum. I’ve calmed down since then, I didn’t realise it was actually taxing my nervous system.’
The experience left the screenstar with a newfound appreciation for ‘vision’.
‘Every day I wake up and get to see the way I do, it’s a miracle. I actually am like: “Oh, two generations back, that wouldn’t have been an option for someone like me.”‘
As well as the ones mentioned above, other projects she filmed that decade include: Alice Through the Looking Glass, Modern Love and The Witches.
For those unfamiliar with what a cataract is, according to the NHS website, it is ‘where the lens in your eye becomes cloudy, causing blurred vision and loss of sight’ and usually presents in those aged 60 and over.
This little nugget of information has truly left fans shocked.
‘She was blind in her eye for 10 years and still acted circles, rectangles, and pentagons around most of the other actresses in her bracket that whole time,’ Kal-El Atreides wrote on X.
‘Oh my god?? The amount of movies she did during those 10 years, and she never mentioned it,’ Nana echoed.
‘Dude, this woman is a machine!’ Jararaque echoed.
The actor has been back in the spotlight more than ever of late after celebrating the release of the highly anticipated Devil Wears Prada sequel and looking toward her turn as Penelope in Nolan’s next movie, The Odyssey.
She sparked discourse after sharing a red carpet hack on her social media, which involved two hidden plaits giving a natural facelift.
The video prompted some people to question if she’d ever gone under the knife, and the rumours have affected her, as she told Elle.
‘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.
‘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,’ she said.
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