Jennifer Love Hewitt is speaking out against the "gross" comments grown men made about her body when she was a teen.
The actor was 16 years old when she was cast in "I Know What You Did Last Summer," which became one of her career-defining films.
The 1997 slasher movie shot her into the limelight, but with success came a lot of attention to her body — something that the now 45-year-old star has opened up about during an appearance on Mayim Bialik's podcast "Mayim Bialik's Breakdown" this week.
"When 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' came out, everybody said, 'Oh, I know what your breasts did last summer,'" she recalled, according to The Hollywood Reporter. "There were grown men talking to me at 16 about my breasts openly on a talk show — and people were laughing about it. It was a culture that was fully accepted. But when you sit and look at where we are now versus then, it is really mind-blowing."
Hewitt had forgotten the comments until about a decade ago when she went back to rewatch old footage.
"I didn't remember that," she said. "I really didn't take that part of it in. But in hindsight, it was very strange to become a sex symbol for people before I even knew what that was. I didn't know what being 'sexy' meant, and I was on the cover of Maxim magazine. People would walk up and be like, 'Oh, I took your magazine with me on a trip last week,' and I didn't really know what that meant. It's kind of gross."
Hewitt previously spoke candidly about the "inappropriate" media attention she received as an emerging star. In a 2021 interview with Vulture, Hewitt admitted she would spend most of her interviews answering questions about her breasts. Watching The New York Times' "Framing Britney Spears," which in part focuses on the media's treatment of Spears and other stars, caused all those memories to come flooding back to her.
"It's interesting, I just watched the Britney Spears documentary, and there's that whole section in there talking about her breasts," Hewitt said. "At the time that I was going through it, and interviewers were asking what now would be incredibly inappropriate, gross things, it didn't feel that way. I mean, I was in barely any clothing the whole movie. For some reason, in my brain, I was able to just go, 'OK, well, I guess they wouldn't be asking if it was inappropriate.'"
After the release of "I Know What You Did Last Summer," Hewitt said her breasts were often brought into conversations by journalists.
"At a press junket for 'I Know' or 'I Still Know What You Did Last Summer,' I remember purposely wearing a T-shirt that said 'Silicone Free' on it because I was so annoyed, and I knew something about boobs was gonna be the first question out of [reporters'] mouths," she explained. "I was really tired of that conversation. With 'Heartbreakers,' that was a big part of it. I was disappointed that it was all about body stuff, because I had really worked hard in that movie to do a good job as an actress."