Anne Hathaway & Thomasin McKenzie Remember Pivotal Moments in Their Careers That Made Them Advocate for Themselves

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In Eileen, the brand new movie starring Anne Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie that hits theaters December 1, the title character goes through quite a transformation. Without giving too much away, a moment changes the way she sees herself, and her life, and allows her to finally feel empowered to advocate for herself.

So, while chatting with Hathaway and McKenzie ahead of the release, we asked both Hathaway and McKenzie if there was ever any moment, or person, who changed their outlook on life just like Eileen’s.

“I was rehearsing for a series I did called Life After Life, the director of which is a guy called John Crowley,” McKenzie remembers. “The series was quite an intense one, like a really difficult journey for my character, and I was leaning in to the difficulties and the darkness,” she says. “And he reminded me to ‘Find the joy.'”

McKenzie, who then took the advice to heart when it came to her character, has kept it in mind for everything else ever since. “It was like a really great piece of advice for that shoot, and that character, but just a great piece of life advice in general because there is so much darkness in this world, it would be really easy to become consumed by it but you’ve got to make an effort to find the good things, because they are there,” McKenzie adds. We couldn’t agree more.

Hathaway, for her part, clarified an important thing before giving revealing her pivotal moment. “There’s not just one moment in your life where that happens,” she says. “It’s a continuous process.”

“There isn’t that one Apex before and after. You’re going to have a lot of them and that’s great,” the Oscar winner continues. “So it’s still happening for me. And I think that the more years you’re alive, the more defined you feel. And then things very rarely can shake you to your core because your core feels like something that’s yours. It’s independent of all of the goings on around you. It’s a much more intimate and a cultivated relationship with yourself.”

And while Hathaway may still be on that journey of finding herself, she did remember one pivotal moment in the beginning of her career.

“There was a key moment in my life as an artist which came in a conversation between me and [director] Jonathan Demme. He had rewritten a scene from Rachel Getting Married, and I was of the 23-year-old opinion that it was better before,” she says, adding that she was “very empowered in terms of expressing myself” at the time. “I made my case and he listened to me with a huge loving, gracious smile on his face, just encouraging me,” she remembers.

At the end of the shoot, however, Demme went back to Hathaway and simply asked “What if instead of telling me that I’m wrong, you asked me why I changed it?” “It was one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned about curiosity and respect, and collaboration, and how to be a good collaborator, and an effective collaborator,” Hathaway reflects. “And so I find myself more inclined to curiosity than I am judgment and that’s an instinct cultivated over time that has really expanded my horizons as a human being and as an artist.”

Hathaway and McKenzie’s new movie, Eileen, its theaters today.

Before you go, click here to see our favorite movies and TV shows about imperfect, complicated women.