Avengers Star Scarlett Johansson Says She Was “Hypersexualized” by Hollywood as a Teenager Because of Her “Older” Looks

Conservative News DailyOctober 14, 2022

In an assertion that comes as no surprise given the reputation of the industry, Marvel Cinematic Universe alumni Scarlett Johansson has claimed she was constantly “hypersexualized” by Hollywood during the teenaged years of her career thanks to her “older looks”.

Source: Black Widow (2021), Marvel Entertainment

The Black Widow star provided this insight into her early days in the industry during a recent appearance on fellow actor Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast.

Source: The Avengers (2012), Marvel Entertainment

Complimented by Shepard on her naturally inviting and warm personality, Johnasson thanked her host before admitting that much of her public persona was the result of misrepresentation by the industry, expounding, “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,’” she added. “It somehow stopped being something that was desirable and something that I was fighting against.”

Source: Avengers: Endgame (2019), Marvel Entertainment

The reason for this treatment, speculated Johansson, was that “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,” she told Shepard. “I felt like [my career] was over. It was like, ‘That’s the kind of career you have, these are the roles you’ve played.’ And I was like, ‘This is it?’”

“The runway is not long on that,” the actress continued. “So it was scary at that time. In a weird way, I was like, ‘Is this it?’ I attributed a lot of that to the fact that people thought I was much, much older than I was.”

Source: The Avengers (2012), Marvel Entertainment

Though Johansson noted that she “definitely was in different situations that were not age appropriate,” she revealed that such incidents were never able to escalate thanks to her mother, who the actress said “was really good about protecting” her.

“Now, I see younger actors that are in their 20s,” she then opined. “It feels like they’re allowed to be all these different things. It’s another time, too. We’re not even allowed to really pigeonhole other actors anymore, thankfully, right? People are much more dynamic.”