The road to motherhood wasn’t easy for Anne Hathaway. The actress, who shares two sons with husband Adam Schulman, is opening up about the pregnancy loss she dealt with before welcoming her first child. Her loss was only made worse by the fact that she was acting in a play where she had to be pregnant and act through a birth scene every night. While she initially kept the loss quiet, she recently decided to share more about the experience, and how difficult fertility struggles can be for some women.
More from CafeMom: 20 Celebrities Who Welcomed Rainbow Babies After a Loss
Anne's first pregnancy ended in miscarriage.
Anne shared that while she was starring in the off-Broadway one-man show, Grounded, in 2015, she experienced a miscarriage.
"The first time it didn’t work out for me. I was doing a play and I had to give birth onstage every night," she shared in an interview with Vanity Fair.
In the show, she played an F16 fighter pilot whose career stalls after she unexpectedly becomes pregnant. As a result, she chose to keep the loss a secret. "It was too much to keep it in when I was onstage pretending everything was fine," she said.
She eventually felt it was important to talk about.
She did end up telling those close to her about the loss, saying, "I had to keep it real otherwise. So when it did go well for me, having been on the other side of it — where you have to have the grace to be happy for someone — I wanted to let my sisters know, 'You don’t have to always be graceful. I see you and I’m with you.'"
More from CafeMom: Anne Hathaway Admits Pregnancy Isn't 'All Positive' After Having Two Kids
Anne acknowledged her struggles during her second pregnancy.
Also in the Vanity Fair interview, Anne elaborated more on the announcement she made for her second pregnancy in 2019. In the Instagram post she shared at the time, she spoke directly to women who may have been experiencing fertility struggles.
"For everyone going through infertility and conception hell, please know it was not a straight line to either of my pregnancies," she wrote. "Sending you extra love."
She knows how hard it can be to get pregnant.
"Given the pain I felt while trying to get pregnant, it would’ve felt disingenuous to post something all the way happy when I know the story is much more nuanced than that for everyone," she explained. "It’s really hard to want something so much and to wonder if you’re doing something wrong."
She wants women who struggle to feel seen.
Anne has always been refreshingly honest about the difficulties she faced while trying to have children. During a 2022 interview with WSJ Magazine, she said, "There’s this tendency to portray getting pregnant, having kids, in one light, as if it’s all positive. But I know from my own experience it’s so much more complicated than that."
"And when you find out that your pain is shared by others you just think, 'I just feel that’s helpful information to have, so I’m not isolated in my pain.' I mean, what is there to be ashamed of? This is grief, and that’s a part of life."
