Scarlett Johansson Says She Got 'Stuck’ Portraying ‘A Bombshell-Type Of Actor’ In Early Career
Scarlett Johansson has opened up about how she turned her career around to avoid being boxed in by a 'bombshell-type' stereotype.
Appearing on the Table for Two podcast on Tuesday, December 13, the Black Widow star told host Bruce Bozzi about the strange place she found herself in after shooting films Lost in Translation and Girl with a Pearl Earring.
The 38-year-old described that time as a 'weird fever dream'.
'It sort of was my transition into my adult career,' she said, explaining that she had 'a really hard time doing Lost in Translation'. 'I kind of became like an ingénue, sort of, and I just think that's part of — young girls like that are really objectified, and that's just a fact.
'I did Lost in Translation and Girl With the Pearl Earring and by that point, I was 18, 19, and I was coming into my own womanhood and learning my own desirability and sexuality.
'I think it was because of that trajectory I had been sort of launched towards — I really got stuck.'
Continuing to discuss her early career, she recalled: 'I was kind of being groomed, in a way, to be this what you call a bombshell-type of actor.'
Johansson continued, noting that 'playing the other woman and the object of desire' led to her to being 'cornered' in a place she felt unable to 'get out of it'.
The Oscar-nominated actor credited Creative Artists Agency partner and co-chairman Bryan Lourd, Bozzi's spouse, for helping to transform her career.
Referring to her career shift, she said: 'It would be easy to sit across from someone in that situation and go, "This is working, why change it?" But for that kind of bombshell, you know, that burns bright and quick and then it's done and you don't have opportunity beyond that.'
In October, Scarlett Johansson discussed being 'hypersexualised' in her early career.
During an appearance on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, she discussed being made to appear older in certain films, which she believes changed people's perception of her.
'I think everybody thought I was older and then I’ve been doing it for a long time, and I got kind of pigeonholed into this weird, hypersexualised thing, I felt like it was over, kind of,' she said.
Johansson was 17 years old when she was cast opposite Bill Murray in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation and played a character five years older than her real age.
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