Anne Hathaway
Anne Hathaway won an Oscar for her role in Les Misérables Reuters

Hollywood actress Anne Hathaway has revealed that her Oscar fame left her "f***ed up".

In a candid interview with Elle magazine, the Les Miserables star admitted that while many crave the limelight, she struggled with the pressures of being a household name.

Hathaway claimed she was left so stressed out following her triumphant 2013 awards season that she had to take a break from tinseltown.

"This fame thing? F**ked me up for a really long time," she said.

"I didn't know how to do it; I didn't know how to engage with it; it stressed me out. And people would say: 'You just have to be yourself,' and I was like: 'But I don't know who that is yet!'"

Having taken some time away for personal reflection, the 31-year-old actress revealed she no longer requires validation from others.

"I've realised that don't need validation from anybody. At all. 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," she said.

"And that's so liberating. It's a big reveal, man."

As the Oscar winner, who is married to Adam Shulman, prepares to star alongside Matthew McConaughey in Christopher Nolan's new film, Interstellar, she says she is now in a better space.

"The man [McConaughey] speaks in poetry," Hathaway said. "I remember once while we were filming, something got screwed up, and he said to me: 'Look, we can get upset about this, or we can go with it and have a great story for the rest of our lives.'"