Serenity actress Anne Hathaway is still getting the hang of motherhood! In a candid new interview, Anne, 36, explained that although she takes great care of her 2-year-old son, Jonathan Rosebanks Shulman, there’s always something new to learn when it comes to parenting — and she suffers from mom guilt sometimes, too!

“I’m learning. It’s a new set of muscles,” she recently told People, adding that playing “isolated characters” in her films makes it harder to be emotional with her son. “It’s hard when you play characters that are isolated. I just did one this summer. My God, she was such an island, and it’s a little harder because I’d be holding [Jonathan], but I felt like I wasn’t really giving it to him.”

Instead of Anne criticizing her parenting techniques, she tries to give herself a break when she really needs it. “I try to be nice to myself,” she said. “I’m not big on mommy guilt. I just don’t really do it unless I really, really, really, really, really need to.”

In Anne’s latest movie, Serenity, she plays a woman who plots to throw her abusive husband to the sharks with the help of her ex-lover, who was played by Matthew McConaughey. Since her character was so complex, the actress admitted her job can sometimes have a big effect on her home life.

“If I’m in a character for three months, I make sure that I’m not in character for three months,” she explained. “That way I’m never asking for [Jonathan] to share me for too long … I just say to myself, ‘It’s three months. It’s three months and you’re doing your best.’ The way I counteract is to the best of my ability.”

Anne understands that it’s going to take her some time before she can perfectly balance her work and home life but right now, she just enjoys the time that she gets to spend with Jonathan. “As [Jonathan] gets older, things will probably become more difficult,” she said, adding that for now, “I can just stick my hand in a puppet and [it] doesn’t matter who’s talking.”