Anne Hathaway has called for films that kill dogs on screen to receive an automatic R rating, arguing that viewers have become genuinely traumatised by canine deaths in movies.
The 43-year-old actress shared her view during an interview with Complex while promoting her new science-fiction survival film The End of Oak Street.
Hathaway said ordinary violence or swearing did not bother her in the same way, but a dog dying in a film should change the rating immediately.
'I feel like movies that kill dogs should automatically be rated R,' she said. 'It doesn't matter if anybody curses, it doesn't matter if there's violence… If a dog dies, it's R-rated.'
An R rating in the US generally requires viewers under 17 to be accompanied by an adult. Hathaway's argument was less about formal classification rules and more about how strongly audiences react when fictional animals are hurt.
Hathaway pointed to John Wick as the film that appears to have made many viewers permanently anxious about dogs on screen. The 2014 action movie famously begins with the killing of John Wick's beagle puppy Daisy, a moment that sets Keanu Reeves' character on his path of revenge.
'I think everybody's so traumatised by John Wick,' Hathaway said. 'Because I've been seeing those too, like, 'They better not kill the dog.''
She added that she was surprised by how common the fear had become.
'I'm like, which movies are out there killing dogs? That everybody's so scared that we're just casually doing it in movies now.'
The concern came up because The End of Oak Street features a family dog named Starbuck.
The film, also starring Ewan McGregor, follows a couple and their two children living on an ordinary 1980s street before a cosmic event rips their neighbourhood into a prehistoric world filled with dinosaurs.
That setup immediately made some fans nervous about Starbuck's fate. Hathaway did not fully reveal what happens, but she appeared to calm fears.
'It's like we break the rules in this movie… that might not be one of them. Don't worry,' she said.
She also praised the dog actor, calling Starbuck 'the undisputed star of the film'.
'You just put a camera on him and you fall in love,' she said.