Jennifer Love Hewitt is getting real about the struggles of aging in Hollywood.
After being deemed “unrecognizable” by fans when she posted a fresh-faced selfie, Hewitt, 44, opened up about the backlash and spoke to why the moment has sparked a deeper conversation about growing older in the public eye.
“I was getting my hair done and I had not a stitch of makeup on, so I threw on a filter. I really gave it no thought,” Hewitt recalled of the snap in a recent episode of the “Inside of You With Michael Rosenbaum” podcast.
In addition to critics claiming Hewitt didn’t look like herself, others accused her of using social media filters, alleging that the Ghost Whisperer alum didn’t want her followers to “know how bad she actually looks now in her 40s,” Hewitt told Rosenbaum, repeating what one troll said. “This is crazy,” Hewitt added.
Rosenbaum pointed out that before they began filming the episode, Hewitt sent him a text message saying that Hollywood freezes celebrities at the age it feels they were at their best, and doesn’t allow them to grow beyond that.
Hewitt explained that Taylor Swift was the first person she heard discuss this concept. “They have this moment when they fall in love with you … and that’s who they want you to always be. And there’s something really beautiful about that, but there’s also something really not okay about that,” Hewitt said, adding, “Aging in Hollywood is really hard because you can’t do anything right.”
Hewitt, for her part, told Rosenbaum that she feels as though the public has frozen her between the ages of about 23 and 25, and that she underwent the unsettling experience of being overly sexualized from a young age. “I didn’t feel self confident. I felt watched. I felt like I had to be everything for everybody all the time. I was called ‘sexy’ before I ever knew what being sexy was. I was 17 years old on the cover of Maxim.”
Hewitt is not alone in her experiences. Countless other stars, including Brooke Shields, Scarlett Johansson, Mara Wilson, Mischa Barton and Natalie Portman have also come forward about being sexualized in the industry as children, as well as the trials of getting older in a society that places so much value on youthfulness.
Portman, 42, discussed her experiences starring in Beautiful Girls — a movie about a 13-year-old girl in a relationship with an older man — on a 2020 episode of Dax Shephard’s podcast “Armchair Expert.”
“Being sexualized as a child, I think, took away from my own sexuality, because it made me afraid,” Portman said. “But at that age, you do have your own sexuality, and you do have your own desire, and you do want to explore things, and you do want to be open. But you don’t feel safe, necessarily, when there’s, like, older men that are interested, and you’re like, ‘No, no, no, no.'”
