Jennifer Love Hewitt is just another female celeb who cringes when reflecting on the headlines written about her—or more accurately, her appearance—in the aughts.Though the 2001 movie Heartbreakers was a hit at the box office, critics and tabloids were more fascinated with Jennifer’s body, which was on full display throughout the film. The actress was inundated with questions about her figure, and as Jennifer looks back on that time in her life in a new interview with Vulture, published Monday, March 29, she’s thinking to herself, “Gosh, I wish that I had known how inappropriate that was so I could have defended myself somehow or just not answered those questions.”
“The conversation for a very long time in my career was always about [my body] first—then, ‘Oh yeah, you were really great in the movie, too,’ later,” the 42-year-old mom recalls. “I didn’t get it. That’s just what I looked like, and I was doing my job.”
And though she didn’t understand the fascination with her body, she says, “I just started to [prepare myself], like, ‘I know I’m doing an interview today, so I’m pretty sure at least 20 of the 40 minutes is going to be about boobs and body stuff, so we’ll just get that out of the way and then maybe they’ll ask me something else.'”
Her nonchalant attitude towards their invasive questions were a symptom of the times Jennifer explains, recalling how even though “interviewers were asking what now would be incredibly inappropriate, gross things, it didn’t feel that way” at the time. She adds, “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.'”
That being said, the star says hindsight is 20/20 and she understands why she was so annoyed by interviewer’s questions. She recalls, “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. I was really tired of that conversation.”
She was even more perturbed when promoting Heartbreakers because she was acting alongside Sigourney Weaver, Ray Liotta and Gene Hackman, but the focus remained on her appearance.
“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,” Jennifer shares. “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.”
Jennifer also acknowledges that she was dressed in a more “risqué” manner for the role of Page, but said everyone was respectful of her boundaries, including the director. The Ghost Whisperer actor remembers, “One thing that really stood out to me when we did the movie is how much people were looking out for me and really making sure that I never felt weird or on display. I remember there were more than a couple of people that were like, ‘Okay, let’s make sure boobs are in place and we’re not seeing underwear.'”
She also says that, despite her more sexual scenes, the men in the cast never made her feel uncomfortable, including Ray, who she remembers as the “kindest, funniest, sweetest man who made me feel so comfortable.”
