Anne Hathaway has celebrated five years sobriety

Anne, who turned 41 in November, told the New York Times newspaper: "I don't take it that seriously. There are so many other things I identify as milestones.

"I don't normally talk about it, but I am over five years sober. That feels like a milestone to me. Forty feels like a gift."

She also shrugged off the notion of "middle age" as a label, and insisted it's an inaccurate statement to make.

She explained: "The fact of the matter is I hesitate at calling things 'middle age' simply because I can be a semantic stickler and I could get hit by a car later today.

"We don't know if this is middle age. We don't know anything."

The 'Princess Diaries' star has recently opened up about her decision cut out alcohol from her life, which she admitted "felt so extreme".

She told Vanity Fair magazine last month: "I knew deep down it wasn't for me. And it just felt so extreme to have to say, 'But none?' But none.

"If you're allergic to something or have an anaphylactic reaction to something, you don't argue with it. So I stopped arguing with it."

Although she acknowledged that other people have their own relationship with drinking, she knows she has made the right decision for her own personal life and experiences.

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

Meanwhile, Anne revealed she had quit booze to make her a better mother for her and her husband Adam Shulman's sons Jonathan, eight, and Jack, four.

Recalling a hangover on a school day in a 2019 interview with Ellen DeGeneres, she said: "I don't totally love the way I do it and [Jonathan's] getting to an age where he really does need me all the time, in the mornings."