Jennifer Love Hewitt recalls 'grown men' talking to her about her breasts at 16: 'It was very strange'

Jennifer Love Hewitt opened up about processing her sex symbol status as a teenage star, sharing that she only recently recognized just how inappropriate grown men were towards her.

During an appearance on Mayim Bialik's Breakdown podcast, the actress, 45, looked back at her star-making turn as Julie James in the 1997 slasher I Know What You Did Last Summer at age 16. Hewitt said she was not prepared for how she would be received during the press tour, which saw grown men make "gross" comments about her body.

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“When I Know What You Did Last Summer came out, everybody said, ‘Oh, I know what your breasts did last summer,'” recalled Hewitt. "There were grown men talking to me at 16 about my breasts openly on a talk show, and people were laughing about it. I didn't even remember that. In hindsight, it was very strange to become a sex symbol for people before I even knew what that was."

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Hewitt "didn’t know what being ‘sexy’ meant," she said, "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 gross. Later it sort of hit me." It's "really mind-blowing" just how much the culture has changed since then, observed Hewitt. "It was a culture that was fully accepted."

Hewitt credited her mother for keeping her grounded and relatively sheltered. “At the time, it felt very innocent and exciting and fun,” she recalled. “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. Maybe because my mom was always around keeping reality very apparent for me. I would go to a premiere, and people would want me to [attend parties], and I’d have to go home and clean my room.”

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"I was in Hollywood, but I wasn't in Hollywood," said Hewitt of not being a party girl, sharing that she had never been to a high school party. "The first high school party I ever went to is when I filmed Can't Hardly Wait," said Hewitt. "I didn’t do any of that. For me it was like, I learned my lines at night, I got good sleep, I showed up at work on time, I did my job. I would go to premiere parties but I would be there for like 45 minutes; my mom was always at the table next to me."

Hewitt later reprised her role in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer and starred in Party of Five, Ghost Whisperer, and films like Heartbreakers. She confirmed last month that she would return for the new I Know What You Did Last Summer remake slated for a July 18 theatrical release.

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