Anne Hathaway recalls Jeremy Strong telling her he needed to ‘come up for air’ after weeks in character

‘I remember you just appearing next to me, and you said, “I think I need to come up for air,”’ Hathaway said

Anne Hathaway recalled the moment Jeremy Strong admitted he needed to “come up for air” after staying in character for three weeks shooting a film they were in together.

Hathaway and Strong costarred in the 2019 Steven Knight movie Serenity, where Hathaway plays a woman who asks her ex-husband to murder her abusive new husband.

Strong, who is known for his commitment to method acting, stayed in character while filming took place in Mauritius.

“I remember seeing you... walking around so deep in character,” Hathaway recalled in an interview with Strong for Variety’s “Actors on Actors” series.

“I remember one time sidling up to you and saying, ‘Listen, I completely respect what you’re doing, but I also want to be a human. So I’m going to just be wide open, if you ever want to talk,’” Hathaway said. “And you just nodded, because you were so deep in your character.”

A few weeks later, Hathaway remembered, Strong sidled up next to her and said, “I think I need to come up for air.” The actor said she then invited her co-star over for dinner and they drank “a lot” of Penny Blue rum.

Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway in ‘Serenity’ (Aviron Pictures)

Serenity was a critical and commercial failure after its distributor gave up on marketing efforts midway through its release. The company cited the film’s 23 per cent Rotten Tomatoes score in its explanation for cutting spending, which has since fallen further to 21 per cent.

In his one-star review for The Independent, Patrick Smith wrote: “It’s a sweaty collection of neo-noir motifs, with a twist so seismically stupid that you’re not only left with whiplash but months of intense physiotherapy.”