POOR Anne Hathaway. Not only did she have to starve herself for 13 days to drop a whopping 25 pounds to play a consumptive prostitute in the forthcoming Les Miserables movie and chop off all her lovely hair but the world has now seen her lady bits.

Yes you heard me right. At the movie’s New York premiere earlier this week the 30-year-old – for reasons I cannot quite fathom, since it was not an overly tight dress – chose to go sans pants under her sexy Tom Ford black gown which was split to the thigh.

She teamed the aforementioned gown with a pair of dangerous looking bondage boots (also by the Texan design god) and, in her struggle to exit her car for the red carpet, inadvertently treated waiting photographers to a full flash.

The Brooklyn-born actress, who plays the ill-fated Fantine in the musical (stop sniggering at the back), was overheard telling a Vanity Fair journalist the day after the premiere that she had been left devastated by the embarrassing incident: “I was getting out of the car and my dress was so tight that I didn’t realise it until I saw all the photographers’ flashes.

“It was devastating. They saw everything. I might as well have lifted up my skirt for them.”

In these days of super-tight clothing plus the disgusting practice of paparazzi lying on the floor to get “up-skirt” shots, a flash of a celebrity’s undercarriage is not unheard of.

That said I never expected we would see the demure Anne Hathaway taking her style cues from the likes of Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton.

We may have known the Devil wore Prada but who knew Anne wore no knickers?

After all this is a woman who made her name playing it prim and proper in movies like Ella Enchanted and the Princess Diaries.

And we all know a princess would never show her bits and bobs in public. Oh, hang on a minute...

Anyway back to Anne.

As embarrassing as this week’s gaff is, and I can’t imagine how I would feel were I in her position right now (step away from the internet would be my only advice), I am confident Anne has the spirit to ride this out.

Given that her ex-boyfriend was jailed for a multi-million dollar fraud a few years back, Anne is no stranger to unpleasant headlines and anyway I think Hatha-waheygate will only serve to enhance the sexy side of Anne.

A side I admit I had no idea she had until I watched Love and Other Drugs – in which she spent most of the film rolling around naked with Jake Gyllenhaal...looking hot.

At the weekend I finally got around to watching The Dark Knight Rises in which she plays Catwoman and was genuinely taken aback at how much she sizzled.

Heaven knows Anne’s miserables now but I predict once the Oscar buzz kicks in around her performance as Fantine she will forget all about her underwear mishap.

And anyway how sad can a girl really be when she gets to cosy up to Hugh Jackman every day and call it work?