After her star-making performance in 2003’s Lost in Translation, Scarlett Johansson revealed that Hollywood kept offering her the same type of roles for years: “the girlfriend,” “the other woman,” or just “a sex object.” Johansson recently told Vanity Fair,
“After Lost in Translation, every role that I was offered for years was ‘the girlfriend,’ ‘the other woman,’ a sex object. I couldn’t get out of the cycle.” She admitted, “It sort of felt like, ‘Oh, I guess this is my identity now as an actor.’ There wasn’t much I could do with that”.
Johansson explained that even her agents couldn’t help her break out of this rut. “They were reacting to the norm. The industry worked like that forever,” she said. Even though she had proven her acting chops, the offers she got were mostly about cashing in on her looks, not her talent.
The Black Widow star talked about how coming into her own as a young woman in Hollywood was both exciting and confusing. “You come into your sexuality and your desirability as part of your growth, and it’s exciting to blossom into yourself. You’re wearing the clothes you want, you’re expressing yourself.” But then, she said, “You suddenly turn around and you’re like, ‘Wait, I feel like I’m being’ — I don’t want to say exploited because it’s such a severe word. That term is so heavy, but yeah, it was a kind of an exploitation.”
Johansson also remembered being ogled by journalists when she was still in her teens and early 20s. “The person [journalist] would be, like, describing my body — and you wouldn’t expect that to be what the takeaway was,” she said. “They were staring at my lips that whole time? That’s so rude.”
She pointed out that this kind of treatment hasn’t gone away, mentioning Stranger Things actress Millie Bobby Brown, who recently called out journalists for writing nasty things about her appearance. Johansson said, “I guess they still do that. I don’t think that people can do that,” showing her frustration that Hollywood’s old habits are still around.
Scarlett Johansson’s experience proves that even A-list stars can get stuck in Hollywood’s typecasting machine, and that the industry still has a long way to go when it comes to treating both men and women with respect.
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