by Amy Larocca

GLAMOUR: So would you like to do musical theater?
SJ: I would love to work on Broadway, but I don’t know that it would manifest itself in musical theater…. I have terrible stage fright that I’d have to get over.
GLAMOUR: Really?
SJ: Crippling. Not as a kid. It came on when I was a teenager, and I think it somehow sticks with you.
GLAMOUR: You’ve really grown up in front of the camera, but you didn’t seem to have an awkward phase.
SJ: I was pretty awkward in The Horse Whisperer. I watch it now, and it’s painful. Did I go through a phase where I had cystic acne and greasy hair? No. But I certainly had an awkward phase.
GLAMOUR: I read your piece [about body image and Hollywood] on The Huffington Post recently. Tell me what inspired you to write it.
SJ: I was training for Iron Man 2, which was a lot of work, full-on. I wanted to do a lot of my stunts and to be believable as this superspy, so I started getting fit and eating well and feeling really good. But then there was this rumor mill cranking out stories that I had lost 14 pounds—I could never lose 14 pounds—and was on some miracle diet. I just thought it was ridiculous. I was working my ass off, but I was doing it on my own terms and certainly through no miracle diet. I don’t want to get caught up in that s—t…. I hate seeing these ridiculous articles where [tabloids] guess someone’s weight. But they approach it as fact! I’m sick of it as a woman—not just as a person on the other side of it. As a reader. I got fed up.
GLAMOUR: How do you keep sane about the whole weight thing?
SJ: I want to look good, obviously. I don’t want to look at the screen and go, Oh, my skin looks terrible, or, I look exhausted. That’s why I take care of myself when I work…. But I don’t feel the obligation to be a specific weight. I don’t feel like I have to fit into a body that’s not my body. I have the body I have and I try to maintain it.
GLAMOUR: So how do you avoid getting crazy about it?
SJ: My parents never put a lot of pressure on us to be any kind of way…. I have [my] funny moments where I look at myself and think, Oh, this is a disaster. But you have to give yourself a reality check and go, All right, if I feel this way, I’m going to do something about it that’s healthy. I can’t look at somebody who is 6 feet tall and 120 pounds and say, I’m going to get that body. That’s just never going to happen. You have to work with what you’ve got.
GLAMOUR:In a lot of your films over the years, you had a sexpot thing going on. When did that start?
SJ: It was a weird phenomenon, but at the time, being 17, 18, 19, I kind of embraced it. You’re realizing your own sexuality at that time, and you’re kind of coming into your own womanhood, so it felt natural…. But I don’t think about being sexy, being seductive. What you don’t want to see is somebody trying to be sexy. That’s the most unsexy thing.
GLAMOUR: You’ve done a lot for someone who is 25. What do you think has made you so successful at a young age?
SJ: I’m an actor for hire. It’s important not to forget that you’re disposable….When you have that mentality, you fight for the jobs you want.
GLAMOUR: Well, speaking of things you’ve done at a young age—what made you decide to get married young?
SJ: I never really thought about getting married—it just kind of happened. It seemed natural, the right thing to do. It was kind of a celebration of the time.
GLAMOUR: Does it feel different?
SJ: I think the only difference is that I’m kind of making my own little family now, which is funny. It’s like a little bit of a tribe. You hope that a relationship makes you better, that you learn things about yourself. You’ve had this one view, and now you have another view. I feel more confident to explore things within myself that I hadn’t thought about in the past…. My parents divorced when I was 13, so it was not the ideal representation of marriage.
GLAMOUR: Is it weird seeing your husband on Letterman talking about you?
SJ: Yeah, it is weird, because I would never ask somebody about their marriage if I didn’t know them. I don’t profess to know anything about marriage that anybody else doesn’t know, or how to make it right. I don’t want to read about somebody who’s giving me relationship advice. So I try to keep some things for myself, to have a private life. Because that’s kind of all you have, really, isn’t it? When it comes down to what separates you from the next person. You don’t go to work and talk about your marriage. Why should I?
GLAMOUR: Right. There are a lot of actresses who can’t make a move without the paparazzi following them. How have you avoided that?
SJ: By not talking about my personal life! I think that makes a big difference. I go to work, I make movies, I publicize them. I hope people enjoy them. I’m not a relationship expert. I’m not a diet and health expert. I don’t know anything except for movies, other than some Trivial Pursuit kind of information.
GLAMOUR: So what’s next for you?
SJ: I’m going to get some deep tissue massages. [Laughs.] No, I don’t know, but I know myself, and if they ask me to work in two weeks, I’ll be like, OK. I don’t have hobbies. If I go on vacation for too long I get anxious.
GLAMOUR: Really, no hobbies?
SJ: There are things I like to do, but I don’t have kids. So it’s not, I want to spend time with the kids. And it’s not like I’m whittling bowls…. I like to be productive.
GLAMOUR: Well, that you are!
Amy Larocca is a freelance writer living in New York  City