Jennifer Love Hewitt slams being sexualized in 20s: ‘I felt watched’

Jennifer Love Hewitt doesn’t love people who are still obsessing over her younger self.

The 44-year-old was surely the “it” girl in Hollywood throughout the ‘90s and 2000s, starring in career-making hits such as “Party of Five,” “Heartbreakers,” “Can’t Hardly Wait” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”

Hewitt is over trolls who keep comparing her now to how her body looked in her early 20s.

“She was a looker,” the “Client List” star said about how she looked back in the day on a recent episode of the “Inside of You” podcast.

“But also that 23 and 25-year-old wasn’t in her body.”

“I felt watched. I felt like I had to be everything for everybody all the time,” Hewitt continued.

“I was called sexy before I ever knew what being sexy was. I was 17-years-old on the cover of ‘Maxim,’ and I had no idea why.”

In 2002, she recalled being told to “be sexier” on set of her rom-com “Heartbreakers.”

“I know that I’m supposed to be this thing for people but I don’t know what that means,” she told a producer at the time.

Hewitt then noted how she struggled with people’s perceptions of her.

She went on: “It’s weird for me when people are like, ‘That’s the girl that we wanted you to be.’”

“That girl was so insecure and so confused and trying her best. But this girl—who may not look [that] way— I like who I am. I feel good. I’m fine.”

She still has her moments though. “I mean, not every day,” she went on. “There’s definitely times where I look in the mirror and I’m like, ‘Oh, dear god, what has happened?’”

Hewitt is now married to husband Brian Hallisay, and the pair share three children together — Autumn, 10, Atticus, 8, and Aidan, 2.

“I’m a mother of a girl, and it’s dangerous what we put on people,” the “Ghost Whisperer” alum noted. “It’s dangerous to say to women, ‘You can’t look like you’re not 22 to me anymore.’”

As for what she would directly tell her critics? “OK, well that’s your problem,” she mused. “Because I’m 44, and this is what I look like.”