In 2021, when the “Framing Britney Spears” documentary dropped, most people were probably not likening the story to Jennifer Love Hewitt‘s career. The overwhelming discourse Hewitt was subjected to in the late-’90s as a teen actress — in the middle of a string of hits including “Party of Five,” “Can’t Hardly Wait,” and the original “I Know What You Did Last Summer” — was so normalized at the time that no one questioned how it could have impacted the actress. Hewitt herself hadn’t really seemed to think about it, either. But then she watched the Britney FX/Hulu doc.
“When I started watching it, I was like, ‘Oh, they talked to me like that. Oh,’” Hewitt said in an interview with Vulture. “I started crying for her. And then I realized I was crying for me.”
The “911” actress went on to explain how the constant conversations in the press about her looks have still affected her in waves over the years. She was 18 years old when “I Know What You Did Last Summer” was released in 1997.
“It bothers me more now than it did at that age because I was in it,” she reflected. “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.”
When it comes to the kind of scrutiny that media obsessions like Spears endured in the tabloids, Hewitt decided that staying out of the public eye made the most sense for her career. The actress even said that she didn’t sip alcohol until she was 25.
Ultimately, Hewitt decided to use her work as a way of hitting back at anyone who tried to frame her body as the center of a conversation. “I really wanted to be a good actor, and I was trying to give to the people watching. I was trying to outact the conversation around my body,” she explained.
Heading into the new franchise reboot film, Hewitt realized she was coming at the project from a completely different perspective — that of a veteran who is more than twice the age she was when the first film was released. It is a “baton passing” for Hewitt, who was at the opposite end of a similar experience with Sigourney Weaver when they co-starred together in the 2001 film “Heartbreakers.”
“There was a moment when we were talking about being the ingénue and then realizing you’re not the young girl on the set anymore — you’re the older version of that girl. Sigourney was like, ‘You’re going to look back and you’re going to remember that, right now, you’re the ingénue and then you’re going to pass that baton to somebody,’” Hewitt recalled. She went on to share something that she told the new “I Know What You Did Last Summer” actress Chase Sui Wonders, saying, “I’m having this moment, and I’ve got to tell you about it. In my mind, I still feel like I am the ingénue, but I’m not. And I just realized that I’m here to be OK with that.”