A changed woman. Anne Hathaway opened up about her marriage to her husband, Adam Shulman, in Elle magazine’s Women in Washington April 2017 issue.
“He changed my ability to be in the world comfortably,” Hathaway, 34, said of the 35-year-old actor and jewelry designer. “I think the accepted narrative now is that we, as women, don’t need anybody. But I need my husband. His unique and specific love has changed me.”
Hathaway and Shulman tied the knot in September 2012 after nearly four years of dating. They welcomed son Jonathan in March 2016. After Jonathan’s birth, the Oscar-winning actress was inspired to become a U.N. Ambassador for paid parental leave.
“I can’t believe we don’t already have it,” she told Elle. “When [my son] Johnny was a week old and I was holding him and I was in the ninth level of ecstasy, I just all of a sudden thought, Mommy guilt is invented nonsense. We’re encouraged to judge each other, but we should be turning our focus to the people and institutions who should be supporting us and currently aren’t.”
Last week, the Intern star spoke at the U.N. for International Women’s Day. She later posted an Instagram photo of Jonathan, 11 months, watching a video of her speech.
“Today, on International Women’s Day, I would like to thank all those who went before in creating our current policies,” she said at the time. “Let us honor them and build upon what they started by shifting our language, and therefore our consciousness, away from gender and towards opportunity.”
Hathaway, who will next star in the all-female Ocean’s Eight movie, is also speaking out against inequality in Hollywood.
“[It’s] not a place of equality. I don’t say that with anger or judgment; it’s a statistical fact. And even though I’ve been in some female-centric films, I’ve never been in a film like this. It just kind of makes you aware of the ways you sort of unconsciously change yourself to fit certain scenarios,” she told Elle. “It’s not better or worse, or right or wrong. But there are certain things you understand about one another because of experiences you have in common … it’s probably easy for men to take that for granted. Just being on a set where I’m the one who possesses that ease is really something. It’s a nice alternative narrative.”
