It’s no brand-new information that Hollywood suffers from gender divide, massively at the early times. According to a Vox article from 2015, the industry tends to produce projects that underrepresent women and portray them in ways that make them inferior to their male co-stars. The entertainment world has already victimized numerous young girls, and MCU star Scarlett Johansson broke her silence on her experience of being groomed to do bombshell roles in the early years of her career.
Speaking recently on the Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi podcast, Johansson admitted that she was once in a position where she acted in order to cater to male desire because at the time she was working her way to stardom. The Black Widow star recalled her two popular movies released in the 2000s as she told her story.
“I kind of became like an ingénue, sort of, and I just think that's part of — young girls like that are really objectified, and that's just a fact. I did ‘Lost in Translation’ and ‘Girl With the Pearl Earring'’ and by that point, I was 18, 19, and I was coming into my own womanhood and learning my own desirability and sexuality,” she said.
The award-winning actress continued, “I think it was because of that trajectory I had been sort of launched towards, I really got stuck. I was kind of being groomed, in a way, to be this what you call a bombshell-type of actor.” Given the awful circumstances, the Don Jon star revealed her agent, Bryan Lourd, helped her turn things around.
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According to Johansson, her Natasha Romanoff role in Iron Man 2 was originally intended to be “underdeveloped and oversexualized.” The Lucy star came to an agreement with director Jon Favreau and Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige to rework the character into something more progressive so that she would be comfortable working on it.
In 2021, the 38-year-old initially opened up about her Black Widow role, saying that her thinking was different at the time and that when Natasha was being treated like a possession or a thing, she didn’t mind because for her at the time, it was a compliment. But when she became a mother, she realized that physical appearance doesn't have anything to do with self-worth.
Johansson has proven over the years that she can perform in any genre, with a range of successful movies under her belt, including Jojo Rabbit (2019), Marriage Story (2019), The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), and The Black Dahlia (2006), among others.
Black Widow is currently streaming on various platforms.
Related: Where to Watch and Stream Black Widow Free Online
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