Despite her tough-as-nails exterior, Anne Hathaway says fame was once too much to bear.

“The fame thing? F–ked me up for a really long time,” the Oscar winner, 31, revealed in the November issue of Elle UK (via E! News) on sale now.

The “Interstellar” actress recalls struggling to cope with the attention she was receiving. “I didn’t know how to do it; I didn’t know how to engage with it; it stressed me out,” she ranted.

Hathaway, now married to Adam Shulman, says she received advice that she didn’t know how to follow. “And people would say, ‘You just have to be yourself,’ and I was like, ‘But I don’t know who that is yet!’”

Following her 2013 Academy Award win for her role in “Les Misérables,” Hathaway fell off the radar by choice. She revealed in an interview with The Huffington Post that she took a break from the spotlight because “My impression is that people needed a break from me [laughs].”

Now, Hathaway is not afraid to be herself.

“I’ve realized that [I] don’t need validation from anyone. At all,” she said. “I’m not sitting here now worrying, ‘What do you think of me?’ With all due respect, you seem like a lovely lady, but I don’t need you, or anyone else, to like me. And that’s so liberating. It’s a big reveal, man.”