Scarlett Johansson says she felt being 'hypersexualized' at a young age threatened her career
"I felt like I wasn't getting offers for work," she said.
Scarlett Johansson is getting candid about her career in Hollywood.
As a guest on Dax Shepard's "Armchair Expert" podcast, the actress, known for her roles in "Black Widow," "Her" and "Lost in Translation," opened up about being "hypersexualized" at a young age, and how she felt it threatened her career at one point.
"I kind of became objectified and pigeonholed in this way where I felt like I wasn't getting offers for work for things that I wanted to do and I remember thinking to myself, 'I think people think I'm 40 years old,'" Johansson said. "It somehow stopped being something that was desirable and something I was fighting against."
The Academy Award-nominated actress made her film debut at 9 years old in Rob Reiner's 1994 film, "North." She then scored minor roles in films such as "Fall" and "Home Alone 3" as a teen.
At 17, she starred alongside Bill Murray in Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation," in which she played a character who was five years older than she was at the time.
"I think everybody thought I was older and I had been doing it for a long time, I [was] kind of pigeonholed into this weird hypersexualized thing," Johansson said. "I felt like it was over kind of -- like that's the kind of career you've had, these are the kind of roles played, and I was like, this is it."
"So it was scary at that time," she added. "In a weird way, I was like, is this it? And I attributed it to the fact that people thought I was much, much older than I was."
Johansson said actresses now aren't pigeonholed in the same way she felt she was when she was younger.
"Now, I see younger actors that are in their 20s. It feels like they're allowed to be all these different things," she said. "It's another tie, too. We're not even allowed to really pigeonhole other actors anymore, thankfully, right? People are much more dynamic."
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