The Hollywood Reporter hosted its annual Actress Roundtable this year with Scarlett Johansson, Lupita Nyong’o, Awkwafina, Laura Dern, Jennifer Lopez and Renée Zellweger.
During their hour long conversation, the six actresses discussed imposter syndrome, the aftermath of the #MeToo movement and how the film industry treats young women.
Johansson spoke about the post-#MeToo world and how she was treated during the early days of her career, saying, “The climate is so different now, there’s so many wonderful opportunities for women of every age to play all different types of people.
When I was working in my early 20s and even my late teens, I felt that I got somehow typecast as hyper-sexualized, which I guess at the time seemed OK to everyone — it was another time — even though it wasn’t part of my own narrative. It was kind of crafted for me by probably a bunch of dudes in the industry.”
Johansson, 34, went on to say, “But it was really difficult for me to try to figure out how to get out of being an ingenue or the ‘other woman’ because it was never anything that I had intended. I had to shake it up a little bit. I remember thinking at the time that maybe I needed a different job in this industry that would be more fulfilling, because it seemed like there was nowhere to go.”
She went on to star in an Arthur Miller play on Broadway and is set to appear in the Noah Baumbach film Marriage Story alongside Dern.
“It happens every time before you start. Your impostor syndrome sneaks in —this will be the time that everyone knows you’re a fraud and you’re going to get fired. It becomes less fear and probably more just a sense of responsibility as you get older, and I’ve been doing it a while,” Zellweger, who is currently starring in a biopic of Judy Garland, said about imposter syndrome.
