When it comes to icons of the '90s, few actresses had a bigger profile than Jennifer Love Hewitt.
So what actually became of the iconic star, and why did she vanish from our screens? Here's
why we don't hear about Jennifer Love Hewitt all that much anymore.
One of the reasons that Hewitt may have eventually faded from the spotlight is that she was simply
exhausted. The actress had been a child star, and by the looks of things, she worked extremely
hard from a very early age. After landing her role in Kids Incorporated, which ran from
1989 to 1991, Hewitt took on at least one project every year until 2015, and some years
were mind-blowingly busy. In 1998, for instance, she starred in six films and TV shows, as
well as her own music video.
As she explained to the Los Angeles Times, Hewitt worked incredibly hard as a young actor
out of fear. In fact, her total focus on her career meant that she never went to college.
She confessed,
"I was afraid that I was going to lose it all."
"I'm going to be 42 in February and it's really bothered me for a long time that I don't know
how to ride a bike… WHAT… I never learned."
Apparently, Hewitt actually found the idea of taking a break, quote, "scary." All the
while, Hewitt was also racking up the awards and nominations in her early career. In 1998,
she won the Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Favorite Female Newcomer for I Know What
You Did Last Summer. Then in 1999, she won a Teen Choice Award for I Still Know What
You Did Last Summer. In 2000, Hewitt won a People's Choice Award for Time of Your Life,
and the list goes on. It's clear that Hollywood loved Hewitt and she seemed on course to reach
the very top of her game.
From 2005 to 2010, Hewitt starred in Ghost Whisperer, a show about a woman who can talk
to the spirits of dead people. While the show didn't receive amazing reviews, it certainly
touched people's heartstrings and had a dedicated fan base. One fan told Entertainment Weekly
that whenever Hewitt's character cries, she cries.
It seems that Hewitt also thought the show was pretty good, because when CBS cancelled
it in 2010, the actress told Zap2it that she was extremely surprised. She explained,
"For me, it was a total shock. [...] I thought our next season probably would be the last,
just because the show had been on for a really long time. It's hard to come up with new things
that will keep people intrigued, but I never thought in a million years that was going
to have been our last season."
Sounds like the abrupt ending of the show was pretty disappointing for the actress.
She even added,
"We left the audience sort of hanging, and I hate that."
Despite Hewitt's early success, things weren't always easy for the rising star. Like all
big celebrities, she was forced to deal with the overly attentive and occasionally invasive
press. In 2002, Hewitt opened up to the Independent about the tabloids, saying,
"I read that I was so upset when I saw a girl who was going out with an ex-boyfriend that
I passed out in a clothes store."
Years later, in 2012, the tabloids were still hounding Hewitt. At the time, she reportedly
tweeted,
"Read like 10 rumors about myself today! So crazy!"
It's no surprise that the constant tabloid attention eventually got to the actress. She
allegedly once said,
"Magazines and opinions of you and stuff like that, those will change, but your opinion
of yourself does not have to based on what other people say."
It's clear that Hewitt had to learn to ignore the press — still, she probably doesn't
mind leaving the spotlight if it means a little less attention.
Even though Hewitt had a very promising career as a young woman, her films weren't always
that successful with the critics. This may be another reason why the star slowly slipped
out of the spotlight. According to a 2011 study of the review website Rotten Tomatoes
by Slate, Hewitt was, overall, the worst-reviewed actress since 1985 – yikes! As the creators
of the study explained,
"Hewitt has the rare distinction of never having made a single 'fresh' [above 60 percent
on Rotten Tomatoes] film."
Apparently, her shockingly low score is thanks to a series of so-called "duds." To be fair,
while Hewitt may not have enjoyed lots of critical success, the actress was certainly
a fan favorite in her heyday. Nevertheless, the constant poor critical reception couldn't
have been easy to stomach.
From 2011 to 2013, Hewitt starred in and produced The Client List, a, quote, "unabashedly cheesy"
show about professional masseuses who provide "extra" services, according to Variety. However,
the show didn't receive great reviews; plus, rumors began to spread about Hewitt's diva-like
tendencies.
According to Deadline, Hewitt kicked up a fuss with producers of the show over the casting
of her character's baby daddy. When Hewitt became pregnant, she apparently wanted to
cast her real-life partner Brian Hallisay in the part. However, producers had other
ideas about who would take on the role, and it seems that the debate even delayed the
third season of the show.
Eventually, the show was canceled before the third season, and according to Entertainment
Weekly, Hewitt's standoff with the show's producers did have something to do with it.
In 2013, Hewitt had her first child, Autumn. Five days before giving birth, she also tied
the knot with Hallisay, according to Mother & Baby. As the actress explained to Mouths
of Mums, having her first child was pretty scary. She explained,
"Those first couple of nights, it was wild."
She went on to say that she thought parents should be forced to get a license before being
allowed to take their child home. And apparently, her husband agreed, calling the experience
"terrifying."
Becoming a mother came with its challenges for Hewitt, who was still trying to focus
on her career. She confessed,
"Having been somebody who has had to think about what my body looked like for 25 years,
it was hard when [the weight] didn't come off."
It sounds like Hewitt didn't always find it easy to deal with the combined pressures of
motherhood and stardom. It's no wonder she decided to take a break from her career a
few years later.
Even though Hewitt continued acting after having her first child, by the time her second
child came in 2015, she decided that she needed a proper break. After all, she'd gone through
two pregnancies in quick succession. And, as Hewitt explained to Parents, her second
pregnancy was extra difficult. She shared,
"This time I'm chasing around a 17-month-old rather than [enjoying] the relaxing spa appointments
during my first. And there's a different human in there than the first time."
Hewitt explained the reason for her decision to Working Mother. Apparently, her friends
and colleagues couldn't understand her rationale. She admitted,
"They were like, 'You're in the middle of a career; you can't do that. But I was like,
'I can because that's what's in my heart.'"
"I was like, wow you know what, I've done a lot of work in the last 20-something years,
but I haven't done a lot of life."
Hewitt went on to explain that while she admires other women who manage to go back to work
after a pregnancy, for her, it wasn't the right choice. She added,
"I needed to work on myself, get into a different place before being able to do that."
While having two young kids at home was a big factor in Hewitt's decision to step back
from her career, she was also dealing with the loss of her mother. As she explained to
the Los Angeles Times,
"I had needed to take some time for myself and needed to grieve my mother."
Hewitt also added that her mother's passing led to some issues with anxiety. She said,
"I think, initially, I went into survival mode. I knew that I couldn't sit indoors and
just grieve her."
So, she decided to move — she traveled and saw the world. However, after traveling, Hewitt
became even more fearful. She explained how this affected her acting, saying,
"I think because I was so fearful, for me to act and to have to tap into those things
not in a safe place, would have been really hard for me. So I do think that that was part
of why acting scared me at that time."
Hewitt clearly needed to heal from her mother's passing before exploring the complex emotions
of other characters.
While Hewitt has always credited her children and her mother's passing as her main reasons
for taking a break, there may be another reason, too. At the time of her break, Hewitt had
been appearing on Criminal Minds — but some fans weren't particularly pleased with her
performance or her character in the show. In fact, a petition was even started to have
her removed. On the petition page, a fan of the show wrote,
"The acting and writing for this character is just wild corny."
Yikes.
Hewitt left Criminal Minds when she got pregnant for the second time. According to the showrunner,
who spoke to Entertainment Weekly at the time, the team hadn't planned on writing the character
out of the show. The showrunner explained,
"We went back into the writers' room and discussed options of how to do that. Timing-wise there
was no way for her to do both, to be able to give that baby everything she wanted to
give that baby and still be on our show."
After a three-year break, Hewitt finally returned to our screens in 2018 as a 911 call operator
in the show 9-1-1.
"I'm a perky person, so I can't be like, 'hey! 911, what's up?' you know? So you gotta like
calm it down."
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, she revealed,
"I've really enjoyed the break. It's really done a beautiful thing for me in that it's
made everything that I do in my acting [and] entertainment life not less important, but
less like, 'It's everything all the time,' like it used to be."
Sounds like the actress returned to work with a sense of balance. As Hewitt explained to
Working Mother, she also took on some other new projects in addition to acting. Apparently,
she also wrote a children's book and started creating wines with her husband.
While Hewitt did return to acting in 2018 after a few years off, she didn't come back
in full force. As she explained at Fox's Summer TCA party, she was careful to think about
her kids in her decision making. However, while Hewitt's return to work was a bit of
a transition for her children, it was even more difficult for her. She confessed,
"It's been a little bit of a hard adjustment. Much harder on me than my kids."
The actress also spoke to Us Weekly about how her kids have changed her emotional intelligence.
She explained,
"I think before becoming a parent, love was something that sounded beautiful and was out
there and portrayed in movies and felt at certain times when I met my husband."
But once Hewitt had kids, she experienced love for her husband and children that she'd
never felt before. She went on to say,
"It opens you up in a way that makes you more vulnerable than you could ever possibly imagine."
As Hewitt explained to the Los Angeles Times, her experiences while she was away from movie
sets all helped her to become a better actor when she returned. She admitted,
"I also feel like I have new things to pull from as an actress that I didn't have before."
According to Hewitt, who's a pretty good authority on the subject, child actors are expected
to, quote, "pull from all these life experiences that so many [...] haven't had." She also
recalled one young actress she worked with on Ghost Whisperer who didn't know what love
felt like, and struggled to portray it on screen. For Hewitt, her acting as a kid was
similar. She explained,
"I feel like I acted for a lot of years from my heart, but not really, truly understanding
some of the things that I understand now."
It sounds like the break was what the actress needed to come back to her career with an
even better understanding of portraying real emotions. We can't wait to see what she does
next!
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