Scarlett Johansson feared her career was stuck after being "pigeonholed" as "hypersexualized"
During an appearance on Armchair Expert, Scarlett Johansson reflects on being seen as older than she was in her early career
Scarlett Johansson is solidly part of Hollywood’s A-list, with an enviable career that includes the rare distinction of being nominated for two acting Oscars in the same year for two very different films. Yet there was a time that the former child star worried she would only ever be considered for one kind of role, she explains on a new episode of Dax Shepard’s podcast Armchair Expert.
Having been acting professionally since she was seven years old, she says, she “definitely was in different situations that were not age-appropriate” at times. “Luckily my mom was really good about protecting me from a lot of that stuff, but she can’t do that for everything.”
Johansson was only a teenager during her breakout year in which she starred in both Lost In Translation and Girl With The Pearl Earring. Subsequently, she reflects, “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. But I remember thinking to myself, ‘I think people think I’m, like, 40 years old.’” Earlier in her career, she had benefited from people treating her as more mature, but “It somehow stopped being something that was desirable and something that I was fighting against.”
“Now it’s like, I see younger actors that are in their 20s, it feels like they’re allowed to be all these different things,” she adds, citing Zendaya and her Black Widow co-star Florence Pugh as examples. “It’s another time, too. We’re not even allowed to really pigeonhole other actors anymore, thankfully, right? Like, people are much more dynamic.”
In her case, though, “I think everybody thought I was older and I’d been doing it for a long time, and I got kind of pigeonholed into this weird hypersexualized thing,” she says. “I felt like it was over, kind of. It was like: that’s the kind of career you have, these are the roles you’ve played. And I was like, ‘This is it?’ …And so it was scary, at the time.” Thankfully, her fears were not realized.