Scarlett Johansson Felt 'Hypersexualized' & 'Pigeonholed' In Early Career

Scarlett Johansson is opening up about growing up in Hollywood and admitting she felt like she had been typecast early on in her career. During a new episode of Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast, the Black Widow star shared why she perceived that to be true at an impressionable age. The 37-year-old made her acting debut at just 8 years old with a one-line role in the off-Broadway play, Sophistry, alongside Ethan Hawke, according to IMDb. The mom of two, who married her husband Colin Jost in 2020, says she is hopeful the industry is now evolving away from those stereotypes. I see younger actors that are in their 20s. It feels like they're allowed to be all these different things, like they can play all different things, and it's another time, too. We're not even allowed to really pigeonhole actors anymore, thankfully, right? Scarlett told Dax she is welcoming the progress, but concludes that there is still more work to be done. We live in a patriarchy, and I feel like there's a fundamental reality of the woman's condition that will always, it's still fundamentally there. It's so baked in to our culture and society. It's hard for me to imagine that ever being not an element. I've come to this realization that it's important to understand that progress and change, when it's really meaningful, takes two steps forward and three steps back, and then it gets better and then it gets worse. It's not finite. I think if you don't leave room for people to figure it out, then the actual progressive change doesn't really happen.