How Anne Hathaway Delivered a Full Nervous Breakdown in ‘She Came to Me’

variety.com:

Michaela Zee Anne Hathaway, similar to her character Patricia in Rebecca Miller’s “She Came to Me,” has dealt with being a perfectionist. “I think perhaps in the earlier part of my life, I believed a little bit more in perfectionism,” Hathaway told Variety at the New York screening of “She Came to Me” on Tuesday night. “[Patricia] thinks that if she can just do everything right, she’ll protect the people who she loves from having bad things happen to them.” Set in New York, the rom-com follows composer Steven Lauddem (Peter Dinklage), who is creatively blocked just weeks before the deadline for his latest commission.

At the urging of his wife and former therapist Patricia (Hathaway), he searches for inspiration and finds it in Katrina (Marisa Tomei), a thrill-seeking tugboat captain.

Hathaway and director-writer Miller discussed bringing nuance to Patricia, a seemingly put-together, type A wife and mother on the verge of mental collapse. “I think that it’s really tempting when you’re playing someone a little heightened to go a little big with it, but we talked about how [Patricia] needed to feel real, about how we needed to ground her and how she just had to feel believable,” Hathaway explained. “My character has a bit of a — well, a nervous breakdown — and so I knew I wanted that to feel earned.

You wanted her to have this breakdown because if she didn’t, you thought maybe she would physically explode.” “She’s somebody who’s neglected herself a little bit and has a secret desire that is unusual in her, let’s just say,” said Miller. “She Came to Me” was granted a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement, which allowed the cast to attend the New York screening to promote the film.