Anne Hathaway was "chronically stressed" when she was younger

She told New York magazine's 'The Interview' podcast: "As a formerly chronically stressed young woman, I just remember thinking one day, 'You are taking this for granted. You are taking your life for granted. You have no idea. Something could fall through the sky, and that would be lights out.'

"So when I find the old instincts rising, I just tell myself, 'You are not going to die stressed.' "

The 'Devil Wears Prada' actress couldn't explain why she felt so stressed but admitted she "didn't know how to breathe yet."

She said: "I didn't know how to breathe yet. And that was really complicated. That was really, really complicated not knowing how to breathe."

"That was really complicated. It's actually too big an answer and the simple answer is literally everything. I was very in my head about a lot of things."

Anne also discussed how she felt ill at ease with her own body.

She said: "It feels a little too exposed to discuss the alienation I felt from my body, but there was a lot of somatic stress there."

The 'WeCrashed' actress admitted she "probably" drank alcohol to cope with the stress but the key to being more relaxed was when "a light went on" in her head and she realised being hard on herself wouldn't help her achieve more.

Anne - who has Jonathan, seven, and three-year-old Jack with husband Adam Shulman - recently revealed she has been sober for five years and "everything" in her life is better now.

She told Vanity Fair magazine: "My personal experience with it is that everything is better. For me, it was wallowing fuel. And I don't like to wallow.

"The thing that I have faith in is that everybody else is going to have one or two drinks, and by the time everybody gets to two drinks, you'll feel like you've had two drinks - but without the hangover."