Anne Hathaway has revealed she suffered panic attacks before filming close-ups on her new film Love And Other Drugs.

The Devil Wears Prada star plays Maggie, a young artist with early onset Parkinson's Disease, who falls for a charismatic pharmaceutical salesman played by Jake Gyllenhaal. And while the pair spend much of the film frolicking naked in bed, Anne found her deep character hard to leave at work.

She revealed: "I'd have these little panics before we shot the close-ups and I would become terrified that I wasn't being truthful enough and Ed (director Edward Zwick) had to really sit there with me and hold my hand and be very patient and talk me through it.

"I hate being that kind of needy actor. I love just showing up and doing my job and it wasn't like that this time. But just like my character, I learned an awful lot about what it's like to need people around you and what it's like on the days where you can't get there yourself."

Anne explained she found the character very demanding.

She said: "I didn't know how not to take her home with me. I think in some ways because she's such a different character than me, I was afraid to let her go at the end of the day 'cos I thought oh gosh, what if she's not there in the morning.

"I was also playing a character who was trying to avoid feeling fear and so my comfort with my fear but her discomfort with hers and her attempt to avoid it and my inability to let her go at the end of the day created for some for very confused, tearful nights."

:: Love And Other Drugs is released in cinemas on Wednesday, December 29.