“I’m 44 and This is Me”: Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Powerful Message on Aging Gracefully. Jennifer Love Hewitt Champions Real Beauty. Aging in Hollywood: Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Honest Take.
“It’s dangerous, I think, to say to women, ‘You can’t look like you’re not 22 to me anymore because I don’t know how to take that,'” the actress said in a recent podcast appearance.
Jennifer Love Hewitt is getting real about aging in the spotlight.
The 9-1-1 star, 44, appeared on the podcast Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum earlier this month, and pushed back on claims that she looked “unrecognizable” after debuting a dark bob to her Instagram followers this fall.
“Aging in Hollywood is really hard,” Hewitt told host Michael Rosenbaum. “It’s really hard because you can’t do anything right.”
The actress went on to discuss the backlash and attention that followed her post-hair appointment selfie.
“I was getting my hair done and I had not a stitch of makeup on so I threw on a filter,” she said. “And it was just a filter that at the time, looked nice in the light at the salon.”
“I really gave it no thought,” she added.
Hewitt said that after she posted the photo, “a bunch of people were like, ‘Jennifer Love Hewitt is unrecognizable.’”
“And then another place was like, ‘She’s unrecognizable and so she’s gone to filters because she doesn’t want us to know how bad she actually looks now in her 40s,’” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘This is crazy right?’”
To poke fun at the haters, Hewitt said she posted more photos, this time with “over-the-top, crazy” filters on — and was met with even more vitriol.
“I was like, ‘All natural, no filter,’ like trying to make fun of it, and then they came after me for that and they were like, ‘Well, now she’s just defending herself,” she said. “And I realized, I was like, ‘I can do no right.’”
After Rosenbaum asked her why she pays so much attention to people “who have nothing better to do than to put you down,” the actress responded, “Because to pretend that we don’t is a lie.”
The Criminal Minds actress also acknowledged the positive attention she receives, telling the host, “I will say the majority of people have been very kind to me.”
“They’ve grown up with me. They look like I do now,” she continued. “We’re all getting lines and maybe in menopause and who knows what else is coming for us.”
But Hewitt said she can’t help but give those who make negative comments about her appearance attention because of her daughter, Autumn. (She shares Autumn, 10, as well as sons Atticus, 8, and Aidan, 2, with husband Brian Hallisay.)
The I Know What You Did Last Summer star said the “only reason those people bother me” is because “I’m a mother of a girl.”
“It’s dangerous what we put on people,” Hewitt said. “It’s dangerous, I think, to say to women, ‘You can’t look like you’re not 22 to me anymore because I don’t know how to take that.’”
“Because I’m 44, and this is what I look like,” she added.
Hewitt also reflected on her younger years, saying, “At 23, 24, 25, I didn’t feel self-confident.”
“I felt watched. I felt like I had to be everything for everybody all the time,” she continued. “I was called sexy before I ever knew what being sexy was. Like, I was 17 years old on the on the cover of Maxim, and I had no idea why I was on the cover of Maxim.”
Added Hewitt: “That girl was so insecure and so confused and trying her best.”
