Anne Hathaway says 'The Idea of You' is the most groundbreaking movie about an older woman's sexuality since 'How Stella Got Her Groove Back'

• Anne Hathaway thinks there should be more movies like "How Stella Got Her Groove Back."
• Her new film, "The Idea of You," similarly focuses on a 40-year-old woman's sexuality.

Anne Hathaway thinks there have been too few movies focusing on older women embracing their sexuality. "The Idea of You" is here to fix that.

On the red carpet at the movie's SXSW Film & TV Festival premiere earlier this month, Hathaway explained why it was important to her to tell the story of a sexually confident woman conquering life in her 40s.

"Because I can't think of another one?" the actor quipped. "Except for maybe 'How Stella Got Her Groove Back,' and it's been — no disrespect to anybody there, but we should have had way more stories like that between 'Stella' and when this one was made."

"How Stella Got Her Groove Back," starring Angela Bassett as 40-year-old Stella and Taye Diggs as her much younger love interest, came out in 1998.

Hathaway isn't so sure why there haven't been more movies about women like Stella and Solène, her character in "The Idea of You," when there are plenty out there like them.

"I don't know why. I have a lot of friends like Solène," she told BI. "I have a lot of friends who are looking for love, and I know a lot of people — not just 40-year-old women — but people who need to recover from a broken heart and accept love."

"The idea that we could be part of representing someone who has the strength to choose her own heart over the disapproval of the world felt really special to me," she added.

In "The Idea of You," based on the novel of the same name by Robinne Lee, Hathaway plays Solène Marchand, a 40-year-old single mom who embarks on a passionate relationship with Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine), a 24-year-old singer in a wildly popular boyband, after a meet-cute at Coachella.

The extremely sexy movie is filled with intimate scenes — which is practically a revelation for Hathaway, who recently opened up about being told she had no sex appeal earlier in her career.

"I was like, 'I'm a Scorpio. I know what I'm like on a Saturday night,'" Hathaway told Vanity Fair.

"The Idea of You" is streaming on May 2 on Prime Video.