Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson opened up recently about her earlier roles in her acting career.
The 38-year-old spoke during the Table for Two podcast on Tuesday about how she felt while filming her 2003 movies “Lost in Translation” and “Girl with a Pearl Earring” while she was in her teens.
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“It sort of was my transition into my adult career,” Johansson said, adding that she had “a really hard time doing “Lost in Translation.”
She explained: “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.”
Scarlett Johansson adds that for a while she felt “stuck” in one place in her career.
“I think it was because of that trajectory I had been sort of launched towards, I really got stuck,” she said. “I was kind of being groomed, in a way, to be this what you call a bombshell-type of actor.”
Scarlett Johansson turning things around
Scarlett Johansson said her agent Bryan Lourd helped her turn things around.
“It would be easy to sit across from someone in that situation and go, ‘This is working, why change it?’” the actress said of changing the course of her career along with Lourd. “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.”
Besides Lost in Translation and Girl With the Pearl Earring, films in which the actress’ sexuality was the focal point include Match Point, The Other Boleyn Girl, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, He’s Just Not That Into You and Iron Man 2 – before she worked with Jon Favreau and Kevin Feige to round out the role of Natasha Romanoff.
Despite some perceived upsides, she noted such a niche “burns bright and quick and then it’s done and you don’t have opportunity beyond that”.
Ultimately, Johansson– who has two Oscar nominations to her name – started “trying to carve a place in different projects and work in great ensembles”.
The new remarks elaborate on those Johansson made in October during her appearance on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast.
She said at the time she felt “pigeonholed” and “hypersexualised” earlier in her career.