Scarlett Johansson felt like she was groomed to be a bombshell-type actor

Scarlett Johansson gave an interview to the “Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi” podcast recently. She spoke about the early days of her career, when she was transitioning from a child star to a young woman. In her teens and early 20s, ScarJo got several “sexy” roles, roles where she played the femme fatale or where she was paired with older men, or where she was simply supposed to be playing an older character. She was typecast back then on-screen and in real life and there were definitely people positioning her that way in the industry, as a sexy young starlet taking certain kinds of roles. Now ScarJo says she felt like she was being “groomed” for that.

Scarlett Johansson admitted on a recent episode of the “Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi” podcast that she felt groomed into becoming a “bombshell” actor during the early part of her career. With roles in films such as “Lost in Translation,” “Girl With the Pearl Earring” and “Match Point,” the Oscar nominee continuously found herself playing the object of male desire during a period of time when she was trying to cultivate star power in the industry.

“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,” Johansson said. “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 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.”

Johansson reminded listeners that even her Black Widow role in “Iron Man 2” was written as “underdeveloped and over-sexualized” at first. The actor worked with director Jon Favreau and Marvel studios head Kevin Feige to re-work the character into something more progressive. Johansson revealed earlier this year that her constant “hyper-sexualization” in Hollywood led her to think her career was ending.

[From Variety]

I think two things can be true at once, which is that there were a lot of men positioning Scarlett to be a “sexy bombshell” and hoping to make her into their next big sex-symbol star AND Scarlett had agency over her career and what roles she took. I mean, it’s not like Girl with the Pearl Earring was a bodice-ripper. Neither was Lost in Translation!! She made the choice to make a trilogy of films with Woody Allen where she was the sex object, she read the script for The Other Boleyn Girl and thought “sure!” I mean, I’m all for analyzing our past careers and professional choices and I think it’s useful to reexamine and adapt our standards and beliefs and all of that – but it does feel like she’s acting as if she had zero agency for a decade??

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.

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