Jennifer Love Hewitt is looking back on some “mind blowing” comments she received after her star-making turn in I Know What You Did Last Summer.
Hewitt was 16 when she filmed the 1997 slasher hit, but the project’s success did not prepare her for the reactions she received from adults while promoting the movie.
The 45-year-old appeared on Mayim Bialik’s podcast Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown this week where she discussed her experience.
“When I Know What You Did Last Summer came out, everybody said, ‘Oh, I know what your breasts did last summer,'” she recalled. “There were grown men talking to me at 16 about my breasts openly on a talk show — and people were laughing about it. It was a culture that was fully accepted. But when you sit and look at where we are now versus then, it is really mind blowing.”
Hewitt said she had actually forgotten about the comments until roughly decade ago when she went back and looked at some footage. “I didn’t remember that,” she said. “I really didn’t take that part of it in. But in hindsight, it was very strange to become a sex symbol for people before I even knew what that was. I didn’t know what being ‘sexy’ meant, and I was on the cover of Maxim magazine. People would walk up and be like, ‘Oh, I took your magazine with me on a trip last week,’ and I didn’t really know what that meant. It’s kind of gross.”
Hewitt added that the comments didn’t really impact her and credited her mother for sheltering her from the party lifestyle.
“At the time, it felt very innocent and exciting and fun,” she said. “So I’m thankful for that, because I think had I tried to take on some of that earlier, I think it would have messed with me a little bit, but it didn’t, for whatever reason. Maybe that’s because my mom was always around keeping reality very apparent for me. I would go to a premiere, and people would want me to do things [afterward], and I’d have to go home and clean my room.”
Hewitt also said her mom kept her grateful for the opportunity provided by the film.
“I remember thinking it was really cool that the girls looked up to me, and I took that very seriously,” she said. “That was the part that I took away from it at the time. I felt a real responsibility to carry myself in a way that felt like I was earning the right to be somebody’s role model. I remember having a really interesting conversation with my mom where [she said] there were probably 50,000 other girls in the world that didn’t get the opportunity that I did, and that I had to take care of it.”
Hewitt is set to revisit her character from I Know What You Did Last Summer in this year’s reboot, also titled I Know What You Did Last Summer, from director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. The film is released July 18.
English (US) ·