Anne Hathaway’s oatmeal paste starvation diet for Les Mis: “It was definitely a little nuts.”

Anne Hathaway lost of a total of 25 pounds from her already thin frame for her role in the latest cinematic adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Mis: 10 before shooting, and another 15 during a two-week break. She now tells Vogue magazine, which she covers for December, about the harrowing starvation diet she had to endure to achieve a near-death look.

Her character is a prostitution dying of tuberculosis, and Anne really went all the way to look sick and dying (something Jennifer Lawrence has vowed to never do.) Looking back, Anne even thinks what she did was “nuts.”

She’s joked before about surviving off of only hummus and radishes, and now she reveals that during the two-week period where she lost 15 pounds she subsisted off of two dried oatmeal paste cakes a day.

I had to be obsessive about it — the idea was to look near death. Looking back on the whole experience — and I don’t judge it in any way – it was definitely a little nuts. It was definitely a break with reality, but I think that’s who Fantine is anyway.”

After living like that for a while, understandably Anne found it difficult to adjust to the stresses of normal life.

“I was in such a state of deprivation — physical and emotional. When I got home, I couldn’t react to the chaos of the world without being overwhelmed. It took me weeks till I felt like myself again.”

That sounds like absolute hell, but maybe it was worth it for her. Her performance is already being lauded by critics, and there’s a lot of talk about an Oscar grab for Anne.

Les Mis is out in theaters December 25.