Scarlett Johansson has spoken candidly about feeling "objectified" during the early stages of her acting career and said she was "hypersexualised" by people in the film industry.
The Black Widow star made her film debut at just nine-years-old before shifting into adult roles aged 17 with her performances in Lost in Translation and Girl with a Peal Earring.
The 37-year-old has now said people in the industry often saw her as older than she was, leading to her missing out on some of the roles she wanted.
"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.
"I remember thinking to myself, 'I think people think I'm 40 years old'," she said during an appearance on Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast.
Scarlett added: "Because I think everybody thought I was older and that I'd been [acting] for a long time, I got kind of pigeonholed into this weird hypersexualized thing."
She said the experience was "scary at that time".
The actress noted how things do seem to be changing for the better.
"Now, I see younger actors that are in their 20s. It feels like they’re allowed to be all these different things.
"It's another time, too. We're not even allowed to really pigeonhole other actors anymore, thankfully, right? People are much more dynamic," Scarlett said.
The star gained critical acclaim for her role as Charlotte in Lost in Translation, where she starred alongside Bill Murray, who was 52 at the time.
Scarlett was five years younger than her character – a wife who has been left alone at the Tokyo Park Hyatt by her husband.
In the film she befriends a movie star (Murray) who's shooting a Whiskey commercial. They consolidate in their loneliness together and even share a kiss.
Scarlett then went on to play a seductress in the 2005 psychological thriller Match Point, when she was just 19-years-old, starring alongside Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who was 27 at the time.
The film's controversial director, Woody Allen, was later criticised for referring to her as "sexually radioactive" in his memoir Apropos of Nothing.
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