Jennifer Love Hewitt Says Britney Spears Documentary Made Her Reflect on Media’s Obsession with Her Body

In a new interview with 'Vulture,' Jennifer Love Hewitt opened up about how the media sexualized her during the promotion for her 2001 movie 'Heartbreakers.'

jennifer-love-hewitt
Getty

Image via Getty/Chelsea Guglielmino

jennifer-love-hewitt

Britney Spears’ recent New York Times documentary Framing Britney Spears has pushed other celebrities to re-evaluate their own relationships with the media during the height of their careers.

Jennifer Love Hewitt is the latest star to open up about how the doc impacted her. In a conversation with Vulture commemorating the 20-year anniversary of her film Heartbreakers, Hewitt discussed how the press focused on sexualizing her body during the movie’s promotion. 

“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, ‘Okay, well, I guess they wouldn’t be asking if it was inappropriate,’” Hewitt said. She was 22 when Heartbreaker’s arrived in theaters. “But now, as a 42-year-old woman with a daughter, I definitely look back on it and go, ‘Ew.’”

“With Heartbreakers, that was a big part of it,” she continued. “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. So I remember one specific moment wishing that the acting had overshadowed all that—that for five minutes, they had said I was really great in the movie versus made a body comment,” she said. “Now that I’m older, I think, ‘Gosh, I wish that I had known how inappropriate that was so I could have defended myself somehow or just not answered those questions.’ I laughed it off a lot of the time, and I wish maybe I hadn’t.”

She could sense the media was treating her differently after she wore a revealing top in the 1997 slasher film I Know What You Did Last Summer. She said she was asked a myriad of questions about her chest during press junkets for the first movie and its 1998 sequel, even wearing a t-shirt that said “Silicone Free” as a nod to her irritation.

Framing Britney Spears premiered on Hulu in February, and centers on her conservatorship under by her father, and the way that the media handled women celebrities in the 90s and early 00s. The doc also had other stars like Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson reflect on how the press treated them during their respective heydays. 

Latest in Pop Culture