Speaking to Bruce Bozzi on his podcast “Table for Two,” Hollywood star and bombshell actress Scarlett Johansson recounted being “groomed” by Hollywood to be a bombshell actress, saying that that was not natural but rather a result of industry grooming.
Speaking on how the industry pushed her into certain roles to make her such a type of actress and how she felt “cornered” by what became her typical role, Johansson said:
“I think because of that trajectory that I had been sort of launched towards, I really got stuck in this. I was kind of being groomed in a way to be what you call this bombshell type of actor. I was playing the other woman and this object of desire and, you know, I suddenly found myself cornered in this place. I couldn’t get out of it.”
She also said, when speaking on why she starred in so many “provocative” roles as a young actress and how that relates to how society views young women:
“I kind of became, like, an ingénue. Young girls like that are really objectified and that’s just a fact, so I think whatever box they’re put into, it sort of sets you on this trajectory for how your life will go. Now, obviously, women really are able to choose their own path.”
She then went on to note that she fought to escape being pigeonholed as such an actress because she wanted “longevity” in her acting career and recognized that the bombshell type actresses tend to burn brightly but then burn out, saying:
“I think for that kind of bombshell, you know that kind of burns bright and quick, and then it’s done, and you don’t have opportunity beyond that. And I just felt like ‘How is this burning out so quickly?'”
So she set to work on changing her career trajectory, working on trying to find other roles to play that would help her escape the event horizon of being a quick to burn out bombshell actress, something she eventually achieved with a role in Iron Man 2, in which she was something of a bombshell but also was in an action movie rather than a romcom or other movie of the sort she was known for staring in.
Speaking on that, she said, “It really came back to doing work – working at it, and trying to carve a place in different projects and work in great ensembles.”
That Iron Man 2 role was in 2010, and Johansson has since become known as, if anything, much more a Marvel-type actress than a purely bombshell actress, though her beauty and outfits that accentuate it obviously remain part of her appeal, particularly to the teenage audiences to which Marvel movies generally attract.
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