“I was manipulated to be an explosive woman.” Scarlett Johansson reveals how Hollywood “cornered” her in her teens

With a career that began when she was just 9 years old, actress Scarlett Johansson, now 37, says she was “typecast” into hypersexualized roles early in her career. The Oscar-nominated star made her mark with ‘Ghost World’ (2001) when she was 15, before breaking through with ‘Lost in Translation’ (2003).

“I was cornered”
Speaking on the ‘Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi’ podcast, she reflected on two of the high-profile movies she starred in in 2003:

“I did ‘Lost in Translation’ and ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ and, at the time, I was 18, 19 years old and coming into my own womanhood and learning my own attractiveness and sexuality. I was being manipulated in some way, to be what you call a sex bomb actor. I was playing the other woman and the object of desire and suddenly I found myself trapped in this place. I couldn’t get out of there.”

Johansson remained typecast as the “bombshell” character in Woody Allen films like 2005’s “Match Point” and 2008’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”

“It would be easy to sit across from somebody in that situation and say, ‘This is working. But for that kind of bomb, you know, that burns bright and fast and then it’s over and you don’t get another chance beyond that. It was a Interesting, weird conundrum to be in, but I really went back to working on it and trying to carve out a place for myself on different projects and working on big casts.”

The actress concluded:

“Because of the trajectory that I had followed, I got caught up in it (also partly because of the guidelines I was given back then, which was a big part, with my agency and all that). Now I see younger actors who are 20 years old, It feels like they’re allowed to be all these different things. We’re not even allowed to pigeonhole actors anymore. Something has changed.”