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Saying something has "shifted" more recently, Johansson said a lot of roles she was offered or went out for were catering to a "male gaze."
Scarlett Johansson is reflecting on the types of roles she was offered when she stepped into Hollywood ... and how they've, thankfully, changed since.
"The messaging is different — there are many more role models, women are visible in powerful positions and the opportunities I have had to play women who don't have to just be one thing or another have increased," Johansson said in a new interview with The Times of London.
Of roles where her sex appeal was central, she said they were "deeply unfulfilling."
"But when I was younger, a lot of the roles I was offered, or I went for, had their ambitions or character arcs revolving around their own desirability, or the male gaze, or a male-centered story," Johansson continued. "That is less frequent, though — something has shifted."
As for how things began to change, she told the outlet she "just waited."
"I had to become comfortable with the idea that it could take some time," the Jurassic World Rebirth star added. "Which is hard when you're a young actor, but at that time I didn't have any children."
"So, my responsibility then was just to be productive," she continued. "Trying to maintain the momentum of my career and wait for things that felt right. And that is hard because there is an existential angst that comes with waiting, but I had to allow space for the creative process to do its thing. It was nerve-racking. I'm in a business where you feel like, at any moment, you’ll become irrelevant. But I think it pays off — I know it does."
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View StoryBack in 2022, the Black Widow star spoke out about feeling "hyper-sexualized" by the industry at a young age.
"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," Johansson said in an episode of Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast.
"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," she said at the time.
