Anne Hathaway, endlessly brimming with positivity, has never been shy talking about the sudden storm of bad press she received around the time of her 2013 Oscar win for "Les Miserables," when many cultural commentators (OK, bloggers) sniped about the actressy exuberance she displayed on the award season circuit.

The backlash took a toll on her self-esteem, she has said, which she had to work to rebuild. So has the experience affected her decision-making in the type of roles she takes on now?

"I can't say that it has," Hathaway says very politely by phone in a recent interview.

Then there is silence. And it's clear she's done with the topic.

Ultimately, Hathaway doesn't have to say anything else. Her body of work speaks for itself pretty well as she navigates the treacherous waters of being an A-list actress. Fresh off Christopher Nolan's blockbuster "Interstellar," Hathaway's new leading role in indie film musical "Song One" is doubly challenging, as she also serves as a producer for the first time.

She didn't anticipate taking on both roles when she first heard of the movie in 2011, a few months after her doomed attempt at co-hosting the Academy Awards with a listless James Franco. Looking to shake things up and produce movies with her husband, Adam Shulman, Hathaway was intrigued by "Song One," a script she was sent by her "Rachel Getting Married" director Jonathan Demme.

The musical film was written and directed by Kate Barker-Froyland, who worked with Hathaway as a director's assistant on a "The Devil Wears Prada." That smash hit, also starring Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt, catapulted Hathaway into Hollywood's top ranks after she had already won acclaim for everything from "Ella Enchanted" to "Brokeback Mountain," and her first big break in Disney's "The Princess Diaries."

"Song One" tells the story of Franny, an anthropologist studying abroad who returns home to New York City when her estranged younger brother, Henry (Ben Rosenfield), is hit by a car and slips into a coma. Desperate to stay connected to her brother, an aspiring musician, Franny falls into a relationship with Henry's favorite singer-songwriter, James Forrester (Johnny Flynn).

Hathaway, 32, immediately felt a connection with the lost-soul character, who is haunted by her last conversation with her brother, a fight over his decision to drop out of college. But she didn't presume she could seize the starring role. Plus, the character was only 24.

"I am many things, but I am not a 24-year-old," Hathaway joked. But when she and Shulman met with Barker-Froyland about producing the film, she couldn't resist pitching herself as the lead. Unsurprisingly, the new writer/director was pretty psyched about the idea of attaching a brand-name star to her indie film.

"I started thinking about it and was like, 'You know what? She's perfect for the part, actually," Barker-Froyland said. "I cast her a couple days later and basically got to re-write the script with her in mind. That's really cool when you can write for someone like that."

Signing Hathaway as producer also paid off when she got her close friends, famed songwriting duo Jenny Lewis and Johnathan Rice, to write the songs for the movie. Hathaway - who always considered Lewis one of her musical idols - didn't dare ask them outright. Instead, she coyly sent Rice the script, asking him fact-check it from a musician's perspective.

"Johnny came back and said, 'It's really good, I actually really like the script. Who's writing the music?'" Hathaway recalls. "We said, half-joking but deadly serious, 'You, if you want to!'"

And so they did - a soundtrack of haunting indie-folk tunes that echo Franny's emotions throughout the movie as her affair with James builds. They wander Brooklyn and record sounds that they bring back to the hospital to play for Henry, hoping he wakes up. Along the way, James finds himself working through his paralyzing writers' block.

Hathaway hopes the movie's overarching theme of the healing power of music will speak to audiences, just as it speaks to Franny. "She hears James's lyrics, and his lyrics are so incredible, and they actually wind up speaking to exactly where she's at in this precise moment of her life," Hathaway said. "And they electrify her. They root her to the ground. They get her in touch with stuff she wasn't willing to look at."

The star gets to sing a bit in the movie, though it's nothing like Hathaway's wrenching "I Dreamed a Dream," which helped land her the Oscar for "Les Miserables." Which was fine with her.

"I was relieved that the performance had another focus," Hathaway said. "And also, you know, that it felt true to the character to have her be musically tentative, and not necessarily out there. She's not a performer."

She went from filming "Song One," one of the smallest movies she's ever done, to "Interstellar," the biggest movie of her career, two wildly different experiences. But she savored the duties of producer on the low-budget flick - she was the person who had to fetch ice packs on a sweltering day to cool the actor playing Henry under his thick hospital blankets on a non-air-conditioned set. ("I was so worried about him having a heat stroke," Hathaway remembers.)

Hathaway hopes the "little, oddball" film, as she calls it, catches on; it opened Friday and is available via On Demand. So far, she's heard from fans who had family members fall into a coma who have connected deeply with the movie.

"It's very humbling for people to share that part of themselves with you, and very humbling to know that you made a film that allows them to revisit that in a way," she said.