Jennifer Love Hewitt Says She Didn’t Know She Was Being Labeled a Sex Symbol in the ’90s: ‘I Just Went with It’ (Exclusive)

Jennifer Love Hewitt is reflecting on her former teen-idol status.

After she broke through on Fox’s teen drama Party of Five in season 2 as Sarah Reeves in 1995, the actress cemented her popularity two years later when she landed the role of final girl Julie James in I Know What You Did Last Summer.

As her star continued to rise in her teens and 20s, viewers began to look at Hewitt as a sex symbol, the implications of which she didn’t quite grasp at the time.

“I didn’t really know what was happening,” Hewitt tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday. “I was pretty innocent and didn’t really know anything about my sexuality, yet I was on the cover of Maxim. I just went with it. I just knew that as I went along, the outfits on the photo shoots got smaller, and I knew that my brother got more worried, and my mom was like, ‘Whoa, what’s happening here?’ Now, I look back on it and go, ‘That’s intense.'”

While watching the 2021 New York Times-Hulu documentary Framing Britney Spears, Hewitt says she could relate to a lot of what the pop star went through in the public eye.

“She said people always talked about her boobs, and you go back and look at the interviews and the questions that were asked to me as a child, and it’s crazy,” Hewitt says. “The things that people were allowed to say to you in an interview was definitely wild. Now I would be like, ‘Sir, no, thank you. That is not a question that’s getting answered this afternoon.’ But at the time, you had to answer or laugh it off.”

If she could give a piece of advice to her 18-year-old self, Hewitt says she’d tell her: “You don’t have to be sexy.”

“I would tell her to calm down, that she’s still going to be here at 45,” she adds. “I think that’s what I was most panicked about at 18. It was like, ‘How long does this last?’ Now, at 45, I would tell that girl, ‘We got this. We’re going to be here for a while.'”

It’s certainly been a busy year for Hewitt, who recently released her book Inheriting Magic: My Journey Through Grief, Joy, Celebration, and Making Every Day Magical and has her new Lifetime Christmas movie The Holiday Junkie premiering on Saturday, Dec. 14. Additionally, she’s starred in the TV drama 9-1-1 as 9-1-1 dispatcher Maddie Han since 2018.

As she’s gotten older, Hewitt — who shares daughter Autumn, 11, and sons Atticus, 9, and Aidan, 3, with husband Brian Hallisay, 46 — says it’s gotten easier for her to “say no” in work settings.

“I mean, now I have to say no to certain things because of my children,” she says. “I’m also not putting myself in things that would be embarrassing or detrimental to them. I have to be a mom first and an actress second. I want my kids to feel like they come first in our little world.”

In 2025, Hewitt is following new dreams, including expanding “Holiday Junkie” into a full-blown brand. She’s also eyeing a return in the upcoming I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot.

In the meantime she’s taking stock of all that she’s accomplished over the past year.

“When I sat down with my vision board for 2024, this is what I wanted,” she says. “I wanted all of these things to happen, and I wanted to end the year feeling like the ‘Holiday Junkie’ brand is on its way. I’m able to be a mom and this person that people have known me as for a long time, but shifting it into a way that they both come together. So I’m feeling really excited and super grateful.”

The Holiday Junkie premieres on Saturday, Dec. 14 a 8 p.m. ET on Lifetime.