A little role model. Anne Hathaway said that she defended Greta Thunberg from hateful criticism because the Swedish teen environmental activist is an inspiration to her.
“I think that people respond to Greta very strongly either in a positive way, at which point you say, ‘OK, I’m going to look at my own life and look at my own habits and I do care about this and she scares me and I’m going to be scared into action,’ and I think other people go, ‘She scares me and I think I’m going to be scared into making fun of a child,’ and I’m very happy I’m not that,” the Academy Award winner, 36, told Us Weekly exclusively at the premiere of Amazon Prime Video’s Modern Love series in New York City on Thursday, October 10.
She added that watching the 16-year-old, who was nominated for a Noble Peace Prize this year, advocate for the environment gives her hope for the next generation.
“Greta Thunberg made me feel like I wasn’t just doing it in a vacuum and when I look at the way she’s inspired— her amongst a lot of other people — the way they’ve inspired a generation around them, it makes me so happy to see how seriously these kids take their future because it’s worth taking seriously. Also shows how much value they have for themselves,” the Les Misérables star said.
In September, Thunberg gave a passionate speech about climate change in front of the United Nations, saying, ”People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth.”
The teen faced an onslaught of backlash for her advocacy, most recently from an Iowa teacher who remarked that he wanted to greet Thunberg with a “sniper rifle” upon her visit to the school.
Hathaway stood up for Thunberg in an interview with the Evening Standard on Thursday, saying the negative reactions are because Thunberg is a girl.
“If you think about the way she is being criticized, it is textbook misogyny, textbook patronizing, it is all these things,” she said. “I think one of the best things to focus on about her is she speaks from a place of passion and emotion. She is speaking science to power.”
She added: “I admire her and I am glad to see I am not the only one.”
With reporting by Nicki Gostin
