In the late 90s and early 2000s, Jennifer
Love Hewitt was at the height of her career. When she was 18, after the release
of I Know What You Did Last Summer, she became famous
worldwide and found herself being called a “sex symbol”.
In that movie, she had to wear tops that
revealed her cleavage: Because of that, her breasts would always come up in
interviews while she was promoting that movie.
Jennifer Love Hewitt wishes she’d defended
herself against ‘inappropriate’ questions in her early career.
Opening up about the constant focus on her
body when she was a teenage star, the actress says she now realizes how ‘gross’
and ‘incredibly inappropriate’ it was.
Jennifer
talked to Vulture about the dark side of her rise to fame when she became
a household name with roles in the Party of
Five and the horror franchise-I Know
What You Did Last Summer.
Jennifer said that watching the Britney
Spears documentary made her realize how inappropriate the media interest in her
body was.
She said: “I just watched the Britney Spears
documentary [Framing Britney Spears] and there’s that whole section in there,
talking about her breasts. At the time that I was going through it, and
interviewers were asking what now would be incredibly inappropriate, gross things,
it didn’t feel that way.”
Reflecting on her role in I Know What You Did
Last Summer in 1997, She stated in a recent interview with Variety: “I mean, I
was in barely any clothing the whole movie. For some reason, in my brain, I was
able to just go. Okay, well, I guess they wouldn’t be asking if it was
inappropriate. But now, as a 42-year-old woman with a daughter, I definitely
look back on it and go, ‘Ew’.
“And it really started with I Know
What You Did Last Summer, because that was the first time that I had worn a
low top, and on Party of Five, my body was very covered. At a press
junket for I Know or I Still Know What You Did Last
Summer, I remember purposely wearing a T-shirt that said ‘Silicone Free’ on
it because I was so annoyed, and I knew something about boobs was gonna be the
first question out of [reporters’] mouths. I was really tired of that
conversation.
“With Heartbreakers, that was a
big part of it. I was disappointed that it was all about body stuff because I
had really worked hard in that movie to do a good job as an actress. So I
remember one specific moment wishing that the acting had overshadowed all that
— that for five minutes, they had said I was really great in the movie versus
made a body comment.
“Now that I’m older, I think, Gosh, I wish
that I had known how inappropriate that was so I could have defended myself
somehow or just not answered those questions. I laughed it off a lot of the
time, and I wish maybe I hadn’t.”
