Anne Hathaway was upset by her 2013 Academy Award win as she received her prize for portraying human misery on screen.

The 33-year-old won the Best Supporting Actress accolade for her role as the tragic young mother Fantine in Tom Hooper's epic screen adaptation of the musical Les Miserables.

However what should have been the highlight of her career was marred after her emotional Oscars acceptance speech was widely ridiculed.

The star says her strange on stage behavior was due to her distress at winning an award for playing a woman who is forced into prostitution due to poverty and dies penniless.

"I felt very uncomfortable," she tells British newspaper The Guardian. "I kind of lost my mind doing that movie and it hadn't come back yet. Then I had to stand up in front of people and feel something I don't feel which is uncomplicated happiness. It's an obvious thing, you win an Oscar and you're supposed to be happy. I didn't feel that way."

The actress says that the extravagant nature of Hollywood's biggest awards ceremony, to which she wore a $80,000 Prada dress and Tiffany & Co diamond necklace, made her feel uncomfortable.

"I felt wrong that I was standing there in a gown that cost more than some people are going to see in their lifetime, and winning an award for portraying pain that still felt very much a part of our collective experience as human beings," Anne adds.

She explains her speech was incoherent because she was pretending to be happy about her win but was actually deeply ambivalent about winning the honor.

"I tried to pretend that I was happy and I got called out on it, big time," she reveals. "That's the truth and that's what happened. It sucks. But what you learn from it is that you only feel like you can die from embarrassment, you don't actually die."

The star's latest film, Colossal, in which she plays another troubled woman, an alcoholic who returns to her hometown, debuted last month (Sep16).