Scarlett Johansson has commented on how acting roles have changed for women in Hollywood since she started her career.
The 40-year-old told The Times that when she entered the industry, most of the acting roles she was offered were focused on her character’s “desirability”.
However, the actor, who won a Bafta for her role in Sophia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003), thinks that Hollywood is now heralding “a different time for young women.”
“The messaging is different — there are many more role models, women are visible in powerful positions and the opportunities I have had to play women who don’t have to just be one thing or another have increased,” she said.
“But when I was younger, a lot of the roles I was offered, or I went for, had their ambitions or character arcs revolving around their own desirability, or the male gaze, or a male-centred story. That is less frequent, though — something has shifted.”
Johansson has often been described as a “sex symbol” throughout her career.
In 2022, the actress told Variety that she was “groomed” into being a “bombshell-type actor” from a young age.
During a podcast episode of Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard in the same year, she said: “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.”
She added: “I remember thinking to myself, ‘I think people think I’m 40 years old.’ It somehow stopped being something that was desirable and something that I was fighting against.”
Best known for her role as Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the American actress also stars in the upcoming Jurassic World Rebirth alongside Rupert Friend and Jonathan Bailey.
Johansson plays the mercenary Zora Bennett, who is leading a group of scientists on a hunt for dinosaur blood that could cure heart disease.
The film, which the actress described as a “love letter” to Steven Spielberg, will be released in theatres on Wednesday (July 2).
