She may be a two-time Bafta winner and has twice been named the world’s highest-paid actress after starring in blockbusters such as Black Widow and Avengers, but Scarlett Johansson says she’s no stranger to being typecast in her career.

Reflecting on some of her early roles, the actor told iHeartRadio’s Table For Two podcast that her old management team “groomed” her into taking on “bombshell” roles.

“I kind of became, like, an ingénue,” she told host Bruce Bozzi. “Young girls like that are really objectified, and that’s just a fact, so I think whatever box they’re put into, it sort of sets you on this trajectory for how your life will go. Now, obviously women really are able to choose their own path.”

The Black Widow actor continued: “I was kind of being groomed in a way to be this… what you call this bombshell type of actor. I was playing the other woman and this object of desire and, you know, I suddenly found myself cornered in this place, like, I couldn’t get out of it.

“I think because of that trajectory that I had been sort of launched towards, I really got stuck in this.”

However, she says that she quickly realised that choosing roles centred around her appearance had a short life-span. “I think for that kind of bombshell [role] that burns bright and quick, and then you don’t have much opportunity beyond that, and I just felt like I was burning out so quickly,” Johansson added.

Johansson has long been outspoken against sexism in Hollywood, sharing in 2021 that her role in Marvel’s Black Widow was inspired by the #MeToo movement and women who had experienced abuse by men of power in real life.

“We had to comment on what is this incredible movement of women supporting other women, and coming through these shared experiences of trauma on the other side by really coming forward and supporting one another,” she told Yahoo. “At the very beginning of really seriously talking about what this could be about, it was right during the beginning of the #MeToo movement and felt like, you cannot miss the opportunity to draw the comparison between these two things.”

Table for Two is co-produced by iHeartMedia and Air Mail.

Images: Getty