Jennifer Love Hewitt Calls Out Aging in Hollywood After Being Labeled 'Unrecognizable' in Filtered Pics

Mar. 15, 2025

Jennifer Love Hewitt in filtered photos she shared to Instagram.Photo:Jennifer Love Hewitt/Instagram (2)

Jennifer Love Hewitt/Instagram (2)

Jennifer Love Hewittis getting real about aging in the spotlight.

The9-1-1star, 44, appeared on the podcastInside of You with Michael Rosenbaumearlier this month, and pushed back on claims that she looked “unrecognizable” afterdebuting 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?’”

Jennifer Love Hewitt in 2019.Chelsea Guglielmino/WireImage

Chelsea Guglielmino/WireImage

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.”

TheCriminal Mindsactress 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.”

Jennifer Love Hewitt in 1997.Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images

Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images

TheI Know What You Did Last Summerstar 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.

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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 ofMaxim, and I had no idea why I was on the cover ofMaxim.”

Added Hewitt: “That girl was so insecure and so confused and trying her best.”

source: people.com