Anne Hathaway on the 'Colossal' monster, the trolls and her 'obnoxiously' good life

Anne Hathaway's newest flick finds her in a quirky world with a giant.

ByABC News
April 21, 2017, 11:05 AM

— -- In Anne Hathaway's newest flick, she finds herself in a quirky world with a giant monster. The film is called "Colossal." And it's said to be like nothing you've seen before.

Hathaway recently stopped by ABC News' "Popcorn With Peter Travers" to talk about her role.

"I've gotten very fond of describing Gloria [her character in the film] as a party bus and the wheels have just fallen off," Hathaway said. "She pulls over and the bus just kind of collapses on its side in the town where she grew up, small town USA. She runs into a childhood friend played by Jason Sudeikis.

“They become drinking buddies and that isn’t helping her because she’s trying to get off the sauce. And she discovers when she gets drunk in her hometown, a giant lizard monster terrorizes Seoul, South Korea."

Hathaway added that she couldn't actually drink at the time she was shooting the film because she was pregnant. So she found a clever way to make herself a believable drunk on camera.

"While they were yelling rolling, I would start spinning in a circle," Hathaway said. "So when they were doing the marker clapper and getting the sound and making everything in order, which usually took about 20 seconds, I would just be spinning in a circle. And then they would yell action and I would try to walk to my mark in a straight line."

Imagine that. The trick apparently worked because the film is receiving rave reviews.

Hathaway's Gloria character is a blogger. Travers asked whether she chose that line of work for her character because of her own real-life experiences.

PHOTO: Anne Hathaway at ABC News studios in New York, on "Popcorn with Peter Travers," April 18, 2017.
Anne Hathaway at ABC News studios in New York, on "Popcorn with Peter Travers," April 18, 2017.

"You suffered at the hands of trolls," said Travers, referring to the negative ways Hathaway has been treated online by some bloggers.

"It felt so big to me when I was going through it. And then I would mention it to people and they had no idea it was going on," Hathaway, 34, told Peter Travers. "It’s hard to believe this but not everybody has a relationship with the internet. There’s tons of people out there who are living their lives and they’re not clicking on everything. So that was one of the things that kind of helped me wrap my head around it initially."

She added, "And when I saw it in the movie, I thought, ‘Wow, if somebody knows about what happened to me, this is going to resonate for them. And if they don’t know what happened to me, then this just seems like a timely thing for someone like her [Gloria] to do.’"

Download the all new "Popcorn With Peter Travers" podcasts on iTunes, Google Play Music and Stitcher.

But now Hathaway has put her bad internet experiences behind her and finds herself in a good place. She says life for her is "simple. It’s really simple. It’s beautiful. And I feel really lucky I get to do what I love.

“I’m really lucky. I’m with the right guy. And we make each other happy. And we treat each other well. And that’s important to us that we treat each other well. And we have been given the most beautiful gift, our son. And work is good. And I’m so lucky my family’s healthy and my friends are wonderful. It’s obnoxious but life is great."

Be sure to watch Peter Travers' full interview with Anne Hathaway in the video above. "Colossal" hits theaters everywhere today.

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