Scarlett Johansson's mum told her to 'use her sexuality' to get ahead
Topics: Celebrity, Scarlett Johansson
Lucy Devine
Featured Image Credit: ZUMA Press, Inc./Entertainment Pictures/Alamy Stock Photo
Topics: Celebrity, Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett Johansson has said her mum advised her to 'use her sexuality' to get ahead in the industry when she was younger.
Johansson, 37, recently sat down with Dax Shepard on his podcast Armchair Expert, and explained how she'd been told to 'use her feminine wiles' when she was beginning her career.
"We had our mothers who were like, 'Use whatever you can to get the thing you need. Use your feminine wiles. Use your sexuality'," she said.
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"And then there's our generation, I think, that's done that and also [said], 'This doesn't feel right, there's gotta be some other way'."
While Johansson has had an incredibly successful career, she spoke about her discomfort of being 'objectified' and 'pigeonholed' into certain roles, after she was perceived to be much older than she was early on in her career.
"I kind of became objectified and pigeonholed in this way where I felt like I wasn't getting offers for work for things that I wanted to do," she said.
"I remember thinking to myself, 'I think people think I'm 40 years old'. It somehow stopped being something that was desirable and something that I was fighting against."
The Black Widow star was just nine when she starred in her first movie North in 1994.
Meanwhile, she took on her first adult roles at the age of 17 with her performances in both Lost in Translation where she played a character five years older and Girl with a Peal Earring.
The actor said she does feel like the industry is now changing for the better, however - there is still a long way to go.
"Now, I see younger actors that are in their 20s. It feels like they're allowed to be all these different things," she said.
"It's another time, too. We're not even allowed to really pigeonhole other actors anymore, thankfully, right? People are much more dynamic."
She continued: "We live in a patriarchy, and I feel like there's a fundamental reality of the woman's condition that will always, even if those 600 men are not actively aggressive necessarily as much as they would have been a minute ago, it's still fundamentally there.
"It's so baked into our culture and society. It's hard for me to imagine that ever being not an element."
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