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Scarlett Johansson complains about sexy stereotype

Jan 4, 2013, 17:01 GMT

Scarlett Johansson on ELLE cover

Scarlett Johansson thinks she was 'super-sexualised' when she began her acting career.

The 'Hitchcock' actress thinks she was unfairly marked out as a blonde 'bombshell' just because she was prepared to show off her voluptuous figure, but she insists she is a far more complex person than her sexy persona suggests.

She said: 'I think any woman who is curvy and wears a gown to an event is, like super-sexualised. At the time I was only 18, 19. I was young. I've always been curvy. It runs in the family. Throw on an evening frock and all of a sudden it's like 'bombshell!'.'

Scarlett - now 28 - added the attention came at a particularly difficult time for her, as she was stuck between playing childish and grown up roles.

Speaking to the February issue of ELLE magazine, she explained: 'It's frustrating, because you get pigeon-holed and it was difficult for me to get out of that. It was really hard for me to know what to do, which direction to go. I was too young to play a wife or a mother, but I wasn't a teenager, so I was stuck in this ingénue period for a while and I was over sexualised by the media. It was a strange period.'