Scarlett Johansson has spoken out about how, at the beginning of her career, women in the entertainment industry were “pulled apart” for the way they looked and reflected on how today “more empowering roles” exist for young actors.
Looking back on her experiences in the early 2000s in Hollywood, Johansson who was named last year as the highest-grossing actor of all time, said it was “socially acceptable” for female actors to be “pulled apart for how they looked” when she was in her early twenties.
Speaking in an interview with US broadcaster CBS, she said: “It was tough. There was a lot placed on how women looked. What was offered at that time for women my age, as far as acting roles or opportunities, was much slimmer than it is now.”
The actor added: “You would get really pigeon-holed and offered the same [roles]. It would be like ‘the other woman’, or ‘the side piece’ [or] ‘the bombshell’... That was the archetype that was prevalent when I was that age.”
Johanssen was just 17 when she appeared in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation in 2003. The breakout role catapulted her to fame, but while her success and celebrity rocketed, that stage of her career was “tricky to navigate”, the Jewish actor revealed.
“Once you start working, you really feel like every job is going to be your last and that if you get opportunities to work, you have to keep taking them. Even though they might not be as varied as the jobs that really give you pleasure, that you can learn from and challenge yourself with,” she added.
Johansson, who is now 41, eventually took solace in the New York theatre scene to escape the pressure of Hollywood: “At some point I realised, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve got a foothold and it’s okay. I can work on the things that challenge me, and stuff will come out when it comes out, and people won’t forget about the work I did before',” she said, adding that it took her “a while to get there.”
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