Scarlett Johansson has rued the fact that she was typecast at the start of her career. She says she was 'hyper-sexualized', which "at the time seemed okay to everyone," but it was never anything "I had intended."
The actress, who stars in two Oscar contender movies, also told the Oscar Actress Roundtable of how her choice of film roles has changed over her career. She also explained how "the opportunities for women of every age to play all different types of people" has broadened, especially when compared to the sex symbol roles she was offered in her teens and early 20s.
"I feel when I was working in my early 20s and even in my late teens/early 20s, I felt that I sort of got, somehow, typecast. I was very hyper-sexualised, which, I guess, at the time, seemed OK to everyone. It was another time," HollywoodReporter.com quoted Johannson as saying.
She added, "Even though it wasn't a part of my own narrative, it was, kind of, crafted for me by probably a bunch of dudes in the industry. And I guess that worked then, but it was really difficult for me to try to figure out how to get out of being an ingenue or the other woman because it was never anything that I had intended."
An opportunity for Johansson to break the image and do something starkly different came with Broadway in Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge in 2009. She even won a Tony Award for her performance.
"Even though the theatre was terrifying, it was liberating because I actually felt that every night I had the opportunity to change the narrative," Johannson told the Roundtable.
Johansson appears on the roundtable panel with Jennifer Lopez (Hustlers), Awkwafina (The Farewell), Lupita Nyong'o (Us), Renée Zellweger (Judy) and Laura Dern (Little Women, Marriage Story). The full Actress Roundtable will air on January 12 on SundanceTV.
Scarlett Johansson appears in Marriage Story -- one of the best movies of the year -- with Adam Driver and Laura Dern. The film is written and directed by Noah Baumbauch. The other contender movie that Johannson stars in is Jojo Rabbit.
