Jennifer Love Hewitt has opened up in a candid interview about how she was sexualized in her teens.
Appearing on Tuesday’s episode of Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown podcast, the Ghost Whisperer star recalled how inappropriate comments about her body were normalized in the entertainment industry.
Hewitt, who gained fame as a teenager in the 1990s, admitted she was unaware of what it meant to be viewed as a sex symbol at such a young age.
“There were grown men talking to me at 16 about my breasts openly on a talk show, and people were laughing about it," Hewitt, now 45, said.
"It was a culture that was fully accepted, but when you sit, and you look at where we are now versus then, it is really mind-blowing.”
Hewitt added: "In hindsight, it was really strange, I think, to become a sex symbol sort of like before I even knew what that was. I didn’t know what being sexy meant."
She also recalled how men would make suggestive comments about her 1999 Maxim cover when she was just 17 years old.
“People would openly walk up and be like, ‘I took your magazine with me on a trip last week,’” Hewitt said, explaining that she would initially laugh off the remarks.
“I didn’t really know what that meant,” she added. “It’s kind of gross.”
She also shared how the release of I Know What You Did Last Summer in 1997 led to repeated jokes about her body.
“When the movie came out, everybody said, ‘Oh, I know what your breasts did last summer,’ and that was like the joke,” she explained. “And, again, everybody would laugh, so I would laugh. It was supposed to be funny, I guess. It didn’t register with me that this is a grown man talking to me about my breasts on national television.”
Despite the uncomfortable nature of these interactions, Hewitt said she does not hold grudges against those who made the comments at the time.
“It was a culture that was fully accepted. They were allowed to believe that that was appropriate, and I answered the questions, laughed right along with them,” she said.
Hewitt admitted that the attention on her body often made her feel self-conscious, leading her to take steps to downplay her appearance.
“I had bigger boobs for a smaller person, and so it was embarrassing. I didn’t want to be looked at by a 40-year-old in Pizza Hut,” she said, adding that she “always wore big clothes” to cover up her figure.
Her frustration grew when media coverage of I Know What You Did Last Summer focused more on her appearance than her performance.
"I had worked so hard trying to be good in a horror movie, and I really wanted people to walk away from the movie going, ‘That’s a really good actress,’" Hewitt recalled.
"And instead, every headline — and I’m not even joking — for 10 or 12 years after that… it was always about my breasts, always first… That was heartbreaking for me."