She thought her career would end early on because she was seen in a certain way from a young age. Photo: AFP
Scarlett Johansson might be regarded as one of Hollywood’s most beautiful stars – but it hasn’t always been easy on the Oscar nominee.
“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,” the Avengers star, 37, said on the landmark 500th episode of Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast.
“I remember thinking to myself, ‘I think people think I’m 40 years old,’” said Johansson, who has been in films since North in 1994. “It somehow stopped being something that was desirable and something that I was fighting against.”
Pointing to her role as an aimless 22-year-old wife in Sofia Coppola’s Oscar-winning Lost In Translation, at which point Johansson herself was 17, opposite Bill Murray’s unconventional middle-aged romantic lead, the actress said she was viewed as a veteran actor.
“I got kind of pigeonholed into this weird hypersexualised thing. I felt like (my career) was over,” she explained.
These days, up-and-coming actors are “allowed to be all these different things,” said Johansson, noting: “It’s another time, too. We’re not even allowed to really pigeonhole other actors anymore, thankfully, right? People are much more dynamic.”
Noting that she feels like she spans two generations, Johansson at one point told Shepard she was encouraged to “use your feminine wiles, use your sexuality” to get ahead.
“There’s our generation I think that’s done that but also been like ‘This doesn’t feel right. There’s gotta be some other way,’” she said, noting that women who are around 15 years younger believe, “‘You don’t have to take any of that c—p. No pandering.’ ... It’s an interesting place to be in the in-between of.”
Johansson said she’s also learned that “meaningful” change, whether in the entertainment industry or the world at large, isn’t linear.
“It takes two steps forward and two steps back, and then it gets better and then it gets worse. It’s not finite,” she said. “I think if you don’t leave room for people to figure it out, then the actual progressive change doesn’t really happen.” – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
