Scarlett Johansson admits ‘being groomed’ in early career

Black Widow: Scarlett Johansson stars in latest Marvel trailer

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Scarlett Johansson, 38, is known for her successful Hollywood career, having even been named in the Forbes 100 most influential people list last year. The A-lister has admitted in a recent interview that she was “groomed” into becoming a “bombshell-type” actress, leaving her feeling like she had no escape from such a fate.

I couldn’t get out of it!

Scarlett Johansson

Scarlett spoke on the Table for Two podcasts on Tuesday, where she touched on her early acting career.

The actress used the opportunity to claim that she felt that she was “groomed” as a teenager to become a Hollywood “bombshell”.

The Black Widow star was only 19 when she was cast as the sophisticated Nola Rice in Woody Allen’s psychological thriller Match Point.

Having starred in this and movies like Girl With the Pearl Earring and Lost in Translation, Scarlett said she continuously saw herself playing the object of male desire during a time she was trying to cultivate star power in the industry.

She explained: “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 was kind of being groomed, in a way, to be this what you call a bombshell-type actor.

“I was playing the other woman and the object of desire and I suddenly found myself cornered in this place. I couldn’t get out of it.”

She continued: “It would be easy to sit across from someone in that situation and go, ‘This is working.’ But for that kind of bombshell, you know, that burns bright and quick and then it’s done and you don’t have an opportunity beyond that.

“It was an interesting, weird conundrum to be in but it really came back to working at it and trying to carve a place in different projects and work in great ensembles.”

Match Point director Woody Allen said of Scarlett in his 2020 memoir: “Not only was she gifted and beautiful but sexually she was radioactive.”

The native New Yorker’s character is murdered with a shotgun by her lover, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, after confessing she became pregnant during their torrid affair in the Hollywood movie.

Scarlett said “playing the other woman and the object of desire” left her feeling “cornered in this place like I couldn’t get out of it.”

This comes as the Hollywood actress reflected on being “hypersexualised” in the industry two months ago.

She said on Dax Shepard’s podcast, Armchair Expert, that she felt “pigeonholed” in the industry.

Scarlett said: “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.

“I remember thinking to myself, ‘I think people think I’m 40 years old’.

“Because I think everybody thought I was older and that I’d been [acting] for a long time, I got kind of pigeonholed into this weird hypersexualized thing.

“The runway is not long on that. So it was scary at that time. In a weird way, I was like, ‘Is this it?'”

The blonde bombshell started out her career as a child actor but first came to prominence at 17 years old in 2003’s Lost in Translation.

Starring alongside Bill Murray in the Sofia Coppola film, the young actress won a BAFTA Award for Best Actress.

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