The actress has opened up about the anxiety that plagued her early career and the extreme measures she used to take before award shows.

Anne Hathaway has revealed she used to starve herself for weeks ahead of award show appearances in a bit to have a “movie star body”.

The actress, who rose to fame in 2001’s The Princess Diaries, told People she used to struggle with “feelings of inadequacy, insecurity and nervousness and anxiety”.

Before award shows, she would take drastic steps to conform to what she thought was the “movie star body” she needed.

“I remember 10 years ago being so scared going into the whole awards season and doing what I thought I was supposed to do, so I barely ate anything at Christmas,” she said.

“I remember my dad making a pie and I ate just a little bite because I thought movie stars had to have a certain body. I was just smoking, just smoking my nerves away, and wasn’t nourishing myself.”

Anne Hathaway at the 2007 Oscars. Picture: Kevork Djansezian/AP

Hathaway said she has now managed to move on from that mindset by learning “how to say thank you to life by trying to nourish me, by taking care of myself”.

Last month, Hathaway told Ellen DeGeneres she had vowed to give up drinking until her son was 18 after a wild night out with her Serenity co-star Matthew McConaughey and his wife Camila Alves.

“I’m going to stop drinking while my son is in my house just because I don’t love the way I do it and he’s getting to an age where he does need me all the time in the mornings,” she said.

After her breakout role in The Princess Diaries, Hathaway scored a string of high-profile roles in The Devil Wears Prada, Love & Other Drugs, and The Dark Knight Rises.

Hathaway’s speech was mocked. Picture: Robyn Beck/AFP

In 2013 she won an Oscar for her role in the musical Les Miserables but was mocked for her cringe-worthy acceptance speech in which she declared “it came true”.

Hathaway told The Guardian in 2016 she had felt “very uncomfortable” when she went on stage to collect her award.

“I lost my mind doing that movie, and it hadn’t come back yet. Then I had to stand up in front of people and feel something I don’t feel which is uncomplicated happiness,” she said.

“It’s an obvious thing, you win an Oscar and you’re supposed to be happy. I didn’t feel that way … I tried to pretend that I was happy and I got called out on it, big time.”