It seems like only yesterday we were introduced to the bushy-haired and gorgeous Mia Thermopolis
Renaldi. Here's one thing you might not know though: Anne Hathaway's journey to
becoming a respected Hollywood actress was not nearly as glamorous as The Princess Diaries.
The actress has had to face some dark battles in her personal life that she tried to keep private
for as long as she could. But it was impossible to stay silent when the one she loved betrayed her,
in a way that so shocking, even the FBI had to get involved.
But why did Hollywood choose to turn their back on Anne after everything that she had been through?
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Anne admitted there was a time in her life that she had an immense dislike
for herself and she suffered from crippling anxiety and depression.
"It was just a mindset. I didn't know how to love myself. I didn't know how to love anybody."
During her time in college, she used alcohol as her crutch to deal with anxiety and lack of
self-love. When the actress was cast in her first role in a film, she was told by the producers to
make sure she didn't pick up any more weight, which, as she understood it, was that she had to
LOSE weight. Just as she was beginning to feel proud of herself for booking her first movie,
she was immediately beaten down by the idea that her body wasn't good enough.
As her career in Hollywood began to progress,
the actress leaned harder on alcohol to get her through the stress of her growing fame.
"I went to college and I drank a great deal," she said.
"By the time of 'The Devil Wears Prada,' I was drinking more."
While Anne was in the process of climbing the Hollywood ladder,
she met Raffaello Follieri around 2004. For the actress, it was love at first sight.
"He is sooo good-looking … He looks like a God," she said about her new boyfriend.
Raffaello, it seemed, was the perfect man.
He was handsome and had made his own fortune from his Real Estate Property Investment company that
he had started when he moved to New York from Italy just a few years before meeting Anne.
The couple graced the red carpet, and Anne beamed brightly next to her man. She seemed completely
besotted with Raffaello, and couldn't be prouder to stand by his side for the world to see.
Over the next four years, the couple were spotted having luxurious holidays,
and it seemed that Anne was being nothing but completely spoiled by her boyfriend.
Four years into their relationship, it was as though things just couldn't get better
for the couple, until Anne got a phone call that would change her life forever
and everything quickly came crashing down.
In 2007, Hathaway was told that Raffaello was being sued for over $1 Million for fraud by
one of his investors. There was no doubt that the actress was confused by what she was told.
Why would anyone want to sue her boyfriend? He was a good businessman, and he was an honest man.
There must have been some mistake. Unfortunately, the actress could not have been more wrong.
Raffaello settled the lawsuit, but this was not the last time he would face accusations of fraud.
It seems that the funds his investors had given him that were supposed to go towards
Real Estate Properties had been conveniently 'misplaced.' Rather than use the money the
way he told his investors he would, Raffaello used the money to fund his luxurious lifestyle.
With an overwhelming amount of evidence, Anne was forced to face the truth.
The man that she had loved for four years was never the person she thought he was.
He was a stranger, a thief and he had manipulated through all this time.
The actress was devastated and made the impossibly difficult decision to leave Raffaello.
Just ten days after Anne packed her bags and left the man she loved so wholeheartedly,
Raffaello was arrested by the FBI and formally charged with fraud.
Her life had been turned upside down. To add insult to injury, the FBI thoroughly
questioned her too, in order to confirm that she had no idea what her ex-boyfriend had been up to
all these years. Hathaway was forced to hand over thousands of dollars worth of jewelry that her ex
had given her, and authorities seized Hathaway's private journals as part of their investigation.
Raffaello was sentenced to four years in prison, but for Anne,
it was as though she was sentenced to a life of shame, and heartache.
How was she to recover from such a betrayal that was so public? The tabloids went wild,
and everyone knew that Anne Hathaway had fallen in love and been duped by a con-man.
"The worst thing that happens to you can be the best thing for you,
if you don't let it get the best of you,"
Despite it all, Anne chose to hold her head up high, even though she was getting flack from
some of her fellow celebrities too. After she hosted the Oscars with James Franco,
in a performance that was smashed by critics for being totally cringe-worthy,
it seemed that some people in Hollywood weren't very impressed with the actress anymore.
She was also dubbed a "theatre kid" by writer Richard Lawson who also added that she,
quote "wildly overcompensates every time". Even social media had a field day,
with the "Hathahaters" coming out in full force using the hashtag #Hathahate.
It seemed that for a while, people couldn't quite
figure out Anne Hathaway and assumed she was coming off as disingenuous.
So rather than make an effort to understand her, some folks in Hollywood turned against her.
After the release of Les Miserables in 2012, she decided to take a break from
all the chaos and mayhem of fame, focus on her personal life, and heal the wounds that
had been left to fester since her very public heartbreak a few years earlier.
She admitted that she was looking forward to being single and taking time to heal,
and then .... Adam Shulman walked into her life. The producer and jewelry designer sparked such
strong feelings in Anne that she was willing to put her broken heart on the line and risk it all.
“Adam totally ruined my plan. I was really actually looking forward to a little alone time,
and then I fell in love like a fool!"
Anne said that she knew from the second she met Adam that he was the love of her life,
and even said to one of her friends that she was going to marry him.
"I found that the love I found for him made me more trusting of everyone,
and the more I started to see who I had become. I had lost track of myself during those years,
and I actually started to see who I had become […] that's when things got tricky and ugly,"
She explained that she had to go on a serious journey of self love and forgiveness.
For a long time there had been a part of herself that didn't want to trust
anyone after the public shame she had experienced after Raffaello.
Her new relationship blossomed. According to Anne, it was the support from Adam, her
friends and family, that helped her develop into a person who is more comfortable in her own skin
and being covered by the press. She learned to accept her past,
to love and trust again, and over time she started to let people into her life and into her heart.
Anne and Adam married in a very private and intimate ceremony in 2012,
and just a few years later, Anne gave birth to her first son, Jonathan.
But the actress's journey to motherhood was not as easy as everyone may think.
When announcing her second pregnancy, Hathaway took to Instagram with a post that said,
"For everyone going through infertility and conception hell,
please know it was not a straight line to either of my pregnancies. Sending you extra love."
She then opened up about her battle with infertility and admitted she
felt "tormented" whenever she saw pregnant women when she was struggling to conceive.
Anne described going through "infertility hell" and was left feeling "broken"
and "devastated" when she failed to fall pregnant.
"Each time I was trying to get pregnant and it wasn't going my way,
someone else would manage to conceive. I knew intellectually that it didn't happen
just to torment me, but, to be honest, it felt a little bit like it did."
While we don't know his exact date of birth, Anne confirmed the name of her second son, Jack,
in an episode of Live With Kelly and Ryan. She's remained a very private mom, and shares things
online about her two sons very rarely. In a candid interview, she opened up about quitting drinking
for her children, and doesn't plan to have another drink until they're both off to college.
While she didn't think she ever had a drinking problem, she confessed to getting horrendous
hangovers which would last up to five days. The hangovers would make her so ill,
she couldn't work properly, and it would be almost impossible to stay present and focused.
"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."
She went on to explain that the time she has with her kids is precious,
and she wants to make sure she's present and the best mother her boys could ask for.
The biggest lesson we can all learn from Anne Hathaway is the way she overcame her disastrous
breakup with Raffaello Follieri. Rather than allowing the experience to taint her
outlook on love, she chose to open her heart to love and trust again,
and now she really is living her own happily ever after.