‘Pigeon-Holed' Scarlett Johansson reflects on typecasting in early career

Scarlett Johansson has reflected on the narrow range of roles available to her as a young woman in Hollywood in the early 2000s, describing an industry that reduced women to their looks and offered little else.

Speaking on CBS Sunday Morning, the two-time Oscar nominee looked back at what it was like to be a woman in her twenties in the spotlight during that era. 

"Growing up in the industry, and then being a woman, a 20-something-year-old woman in the early 2000s, in the spotlight in general, it was just a really harsh time," she said. 

"Women were just pulled apart for how they looked in a way that was socially acceptable at the time."

The limited opportunities that came with that environment left a mark.

"There was a lot placed on how women looked. What was offered at that time for women my age, as far as acting roles or opportunities, was much slimmer than it is now." 

She described being repeatedly pushed towards the same narrow archetypes. 

"You would get really pigeon-holed and offered the same [roles]. It would be like the other woman, or the side piece, the bombshell. That was the archetype that was prevalent when I was that age."

Johansson was keen to acknowledge how much has shifted since then, noting there are now "much more empowering roles" compared to the "slim pickins" of the nineties and early aughts, and that the industry's treatment of women has changed considerably.

The comments come at a moment when Johansson herself is operating with more creative control than ever. 

She made her feature directorial debut last year with Eleanor the Great, and can next be seen alongside Adam Driver in James Gray's Paper Tiger, as well as in Jurassic World Rebirth.