Jennifer Love Hewitt can hardly imagine what the tabloids mentioned within the early aughts.
The actress, 46, was at all times assured in herself since moving into Hollywood at age 10. However issues shifted in 2007 after images of her in Hawaii surfaced with the headline “Stop Calling Me Fat!”
“I just had blind faith in myself,” Hewitt informed Vulture in an interview revealed Friday about rising up. “I highly recommend it.”
The “Ghost Whisperer” star was gutted after catching wind of the headline.
“I was having the time of my life,” Hewitt recalled. “I had made up the dumbest song about eating snacks and playing in the ocean, and I was singing it to my boyfriend out loud, doing some weird dance move, and they got the picture and then it was on the cover.”
“I don’t think I was ever really insecure until that cover,” she expressed to the outlet. “And then when it happened, I don’t know that I’ve ever recovered from it.”
The paparazzi pictures completely shifted Hewitt’s mentality.
The “Client List” actress detailed: “There’s a part of me that’s always like, ‘Is this version going to be good enough, or is that going to happen again?’ Where somebody’s going to be like, ‘Hey, this is her without makeup at the cleaners. She looks 59.’”
As for why that second specifically was so traumatizing, Hewitt defined, “Because that was me. I think that’s why the insecurity carried on. I don’t know if I’ve even ever put that together for myself other than right now.”
“I think I was like, ‘Oh my God, I was myself one time, and this is what happened.’”
Fortunately, Hewitt’s mom, Patricia Mae Hewitt, who died in 2012 after a battle with most cancers, was there with phrases of knowledge.
“She was like, ‘You don’t get it. You can’t win. This is just people having a problem with the version of you they think belongs to them.’ And she said, ‘Take your power back. Belong to yourself, and don’t worry about it.’”
Hewitt additionally touched on turning into a intercourse image in her late teenagers and early 20s after starring in hits like 1997’s “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” “Can’t Hardly Wait” in 1998, and “Heartbreakers” (2001).
“It bothers me more now than it did at that age because I was in it,” Hewitt said. “Before I even knew what sex was, I was a sex symbol. I still don’t know that I have that fully defined for myself because it started so weird.”
Now, after many years within the business, the “Tuxedo” alum has discovered a house on ABC.
Hewitt stars as Maddie Buckley on the ABC drama “9-1-1.”
“I get to be, not ugly, but raw in a way that doesn’t matter. I get to put all those little things into her that maybe I didn’t notice or get to pay attention to along the way and heal them,” she shared. “I give that to Maddie constantly.”
For Hewitt, it seems like that is the primary time since starring in “Party of Five” within the ’90s that persons are targeted on her work.
“It was the work and then it was the body. And not the body of work,” she mirrored. “Now we’re getting back to the work part of it.”
Together with taking part in the beloved 911 operator, Hewitt additionally stepped again into the sneakers of the long-lasting Julie James.
She reprised her function within the new “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” 27 years after the unique movie debuted in 1997.
Hewitt stepped out for the sequel’s premiere at LA’s United Theater on Broadway on Monday.
Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr., who starred within the authentic mission collectively, turned the premiere into date night time.
Prinze Jr., 49, reprises his function as Ray Bronson within the sequel. Gellar, 48, performed Helen Shivers, who died within the authentic film.
Regardless of each being on the carpet, Hewitt and Gellar didn’t pose for photos collectively.
“For everyone asking — I never got to see @jenniferlovehewitt, who is fantastic in the movie. I was inside with my kids when the big carpet happened. And unfortunately, JLH didn’t come to the after-party,” Gellar commented on Instagram Wednesday.
The “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” star added, “If you have ever been to one of these, it’s crazy. I sadly didn’t get pics with most of the cast. But that doesn’t change how amazing I think they all are. Unfortunately, some things happen only in real life and not online.”
For her half, Hewitt additionally shut down rumors of unhealthy blood between the 2.
“I haven’t seen Sarah,” she informed Vulture. “Literally, we’ve not talked since I saw her at 18 years old when the first movie came out. That’s why it’s so funny to me. People were like, ‘Say something back.’ And I’m like, ‘What am I going to say? I’ve not seen her.’ On my side, we’re good. I have no idea where this is coming from.”
