Jennifer Love Hewitt Reflects on the “Wildly Inappropriate” Comments She Got After Her Success in ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’
Jennifer Love Hewitt recently opened up about the uncomfortable attention she got after starring in I Know What You Did Last Summer. She was just 16 when she filmed the 1997 horror hit, but the way adults reacted to her afterward was shocking.
Speaking on Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown, she shared that men openly made inappropriate jokes about her body on talk shows while people laughed. ‘Everybody said, “Oh, I know what your breasts did last summer,”’ she recalled. ‘There were grown men talking about my body when I was just a teenager. At the time, it was seen as normal, but looking back now, it’s unbelievable.’
She didn’t even remember some of those moments until she rewatched old interviews about ten years ago. ‘I really didn’t take it in when it was happening,’ she said. ‘But now, I realize how strange it was to be turned into a sex symbol before I even understood what that meant.’
Being on the cover of Maxim at a young age made things even more awkward. ‘People would come up to me and say, “Oh, I took your magazine on a trip,” and I didn’t really know what they meant. It’s kind of gross.’
Despite all of this, Hewitt said she didn’t let it affect her, crediting her mother for keeping her grounded. ‘At the time, it felt exciting and fun,’ she explained. ‘If I had fully understood it back then, it might have messed with me. But my mom kept me in check. I’d go to a big event, then come home and clean my room.’
She also took her role as a public figure seriously. ‘I knew girls looked up to me, and I wanted to make sure I deserved that,’ she said. Her mom reminded her that thousands of other girls didn’t get the same chance she did, so she had to take care of it.
Now, at 45, Hewitt is returning to her role in the upcoming I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot, directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. The movie will be released on July 18.
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