Jennifer Love Hewitt Recalled “Gross” Questions About Her Body as a Young Actress
"When I watched that Britney Spears documentary, it hurt my heart a little bit, because I remember in hindsight having that feeling."
In a March 29th interview with Vulture, Jennifer Love Hewitt looked back on her iconic Heartbreakers character Page, a 21-year-old con artist who works alongside her mother Max (played by Sigourney Weaver). When Hewitt took the role, it was one of her sexiest yet, and she recalls how interview questions changed once the world had seen her in tube tops and minidresses.
“It’s interesting, I just watched the Britney Spears documentary [The New York Times Presents: 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. 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.“
Hewitt says that now when she looks back at the questions as a 42-year-old woman with a daughter, she thinks, Ew.
She said that the “gross” comments first started coming when she wore a low-cut top in I Know What You Did Last Summer after staying covered up in Party of Five. “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.”
And things only got worse when her wardrobe got more minimal with Heartbreakers. “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,” Hewitt told Vulture.
She said, 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.”
Hewitt said she “didn’t get” the interest in her body. “That’s just what I looked like, and I was doing my job,” she recalled thinking. The boob talk got so bad that Hewitt would mentally prepare herself to talk about her chest for a large portion of any interview. “When I watched that Britney Spears documentary, it hurt my heart a little bit, because I remember in hindsight having that feeling,” she continued. “I’m really grateful that we’re in a time where, hopefully, that narrative is going to change for young girls who are coming up now, and they won’t have to have those conversations.”