Jennifer Love Hewitt can hardly believe what the tabloids said in the early aughts.
The actress, 46, was always confident in herself since stepping into Hollywood at age 10. But things shifted in 2007 after photos of her in Hawaii surfaced with the headline “Stop Calling Me Fat!”
“I just had blind faith in myself,” Hewitt told Vulture in an interview published Friday about growing up. “I highly recommend it.”
The “Ghost Whisperer” star was gutted after catching wind of the headline.
“I was having the time of my life,” Hewitt recalled. “I had made up the dumbest song about eating snacks and playing in the ocean, and I was singing it to my boyfriend out loud, doing some weird dance move, and they got the picture and then it was on the cover.”
“I don’t think I was ever really insecure until that cover,” she expressed to the outlet. “And then when it happened, I don’t know that I’ve ever recovered from it.”
The paparazzi shots permanently shifted Hewitt’s mentality.
The “Client List” actress detailed: “There’s a part of me that’s always like, ‘Is this version going to be good enough, or is that going to happen again?’ Where somebody’s going to be like, ‘Hey, this is her without makeup at the cleaners. She looks 59.’”
As for why that moment in particular was so traumatizing, Hewitt explained, “Because that was me. I think that’s why the insecurity carried on. I don’t know if I’ve even ever put that together for myself other than right now.”
“I think I was like, ‘Oh my God, I was myself one time, and this is what happened.’”
Luckily, Hewitt’s mother, Patricia Mae Hewitt, who died in 2012 after a battle with cancer, was there with words of wisdom.
“She was like, ‘You don’t get it. You can’t win. This is just people having a problem with the version of you they think belongs to them.’ And she said, ‘Take your power back. Belong to yourself, and don’t worry about it.’”
Hewitt also touched on becoming a sex symbol in her late teens and early 20s after starring in hits like 1997’s “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” “Can’t Hardly Wait” in 1998, and “Heartbreakers” (2001).
“It bothers me more now than it did at that age because I was in it,” Hewitt stated. “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.”
Now, after decades in the industry, the “Tuxedo” alum has found a home on ABC.
Hewitt stars as Maddie Buckley on the ABC drama “9-1-1.”
“I get to be, not ugly, but raw in a way that doesn’t matter. I get to put all those little things into her that maybe I didn’t notice or get to pay attention to along the way and heal them,” she shared. “I give that to Maddie constantly.”
For Hewitt, it feels like this is the first time since starring in “Party of Five” in the ’90s that people are focused on her work.
“It was the work and then it was the body. And not the body of work,” she reflected. “Now we’re getting back to the work part of it.”
Along with playing the beloved 911 operator, Hewitt also stepped back into the shoes of the iconic Julie James.
She reprised her role in the new “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” 27 years after the original film debuted in 1997.
Hewitt stepped out for the sequel’s premiere at LA’s United Theater on Broadway on Monday.
Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr., who starred in the original project together, turned the premiere into date night.
Prinze Jr., 49, reprises his role as Ray Bronson in the sequel. Gellar, 48, played Helen Shivers, who died in the original movie.
Despite both being on the carpet, Hewitt and Gellar didn’t pose for pictures together.
“For everyone asking — I never got to see @jenniferlovehewitt, who is fantastic in the movie. I was inside with my kids when the big carpet happened. And unfortunately, JLH didn’t come to the after-party,” Gellar commented on Instagram Wednesday.
The “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” star added, “If you have ever been to one of these, it’s crazy. I sadly didn’t get pics with most of the cast. But that doesn’t change how amazing I think they all are. Unfortunately, some things happen only in real life and not online.”
For her part, Hewitt also shut down rumors of bad blood between the two.
“I haven’t seen Sarah,” she told Vulture. “Literally, we’ve not talked since I saw her at 18 years old when the first movie came out. That’s why it’s so funny to me. People were like, ‘Say something back.’ And I’m like, ‘What am I going to say? I’ve not seen her.’ On my side, we’re good. I have no idea where this is coming from.”
