With her youthful charm and naivete, the ingénue is a long-time Hollywood staple… but in recent years, she seems to be disappearing. So is this trope really on the way out because it no longer works in the modern day, or is it just changing with the times? A French term meaning “an innocent or unsophisticated young woman,” ‘Ingenue’ was historically applied to women in plays or films who were naive, youthful, and pretty much always virgins. And if she wasn’t young, she had to be very childlike to capture this label.

They often play second fiddle to a leading man, and are the object of his affections or rely on him for support. She may have some pluck, but ultimately she’s unwise in the ways of the world, at the mercy of others, and not really an agent unto herself. But while ingenues might have lacked sophistication, they were historically demure and still quite respectable. Later versions of the trope, however, shifted to retain only certain aspects of the original ingénue – often keeping the youthfulness and innocence but adding in a layer of overt sexuality, bringing the way the character type had always been sexualized to the forefront. But not only is the Ingenue trope applied to characters on-screen, it’s also often bestowed upon pretty, young actresses in real life. It pegs these women as perpetually youthful and childlike, lauding them for their perceived sexual naivete while simultaneously sexualizing them.

Thankfully today, it feels like we’re seeing this ‘ingenue’ trajectory far less often, both on and off screen. Here’s our take on Hollywood’s Ingenue Trope - and why it’s seemingly disappeared, thanks to a wave of outspoken, young actresses, evolving roles for women, and changing societal values.

Chapter 1: The Evolution of the Ingenue

While the term is still thrown around and given to newcomer actresses in tinseltown, the meaning has changed over time as Hollywood matured and roles for women reflected the fluctuation of America’s Puritanical values.

During the Silent film era, “Little Mary Pickford” was the actress that defined the Hollywood Ingenue. She was the very vision of innocence in her childish dresses and long ringlets. For a time, the adoring public all but believed that Pickford, an adult, was actually a virginal little girl, brimming with childlike wonder and vulnerability in her film roles. She even invented a spotlight to make herself look younger and had oversized set pieces built to make her look tiny on screen. Another classic example of the Ingenue can be found in “The Phantom of the Opera,” a book, turned movie, turned musical, turned back into a movie about a doe-eyed performer in the Paris opera. Ever sweet and trusting, Christine still believes in stories her father told her about angels and is naive enough to trust the Phantom. She’s framed as a total contrast to the more ‘experienced,’ vampy Carlotta, and gets trapped in a love triangle with the Phantom and her original love interest, Raoul. In the end, through the sheer force of her pure heart and compassion, she facilitates the basement-dwelling masked murderer’s character growth by showing him the true power of empathy and love.

Classical Hollywood was basically an industry run by men, for men, and under those circumstances, the Ingenue reigned supreme. Hollywood was obsessed with youth and beauty, and actresses had to fit the part if they even wanted a chance at stardom. Many actresses were saddled with the Ingenue label during this time period, kept perpetually young by Hollywood and often playing secondary roles to their leading men. They were objects of virginal innocence, and often had to keep that reputation both on screen and off.

But eventually, the ingénue trope began to expand beyond its original confines. When Marilyn Monroe roared onto the scene in the 1950s, she was labeled as both an ingénue and a vamp that could bring a grown man to his knees on sex appeal alone. She was sexy, yet childlike, and Hollywood wasn’t able to put her into a single box. Monroe’s rise to fame also coincided with the time period where the Hays Production Code, the system that made sure all films were chaste and unoffensive, was coming under fire and women were more openly exploring their own sexuality off-screen. Monroe’s roles fluctuated between these two sides of the madonna-whore dichotomy; her role of Sugar Kane in 1959’s Some Like It Hot points to these contradictions. She, like the original ingenue, is sweet and not particularly cunning… even saying so herself. But she’s also experienced sexually and talks openly about her rendezvous with saxophone players. Sugar Kane points to an evolving ingénue who is still youthful with an air of innocence while also being more open with her sexuality.

By the 1970s, the virginal aspect of previous ingénues was essentially gone, replaced instead by overtly sexualized young characters played by very young actresses, like twelve-year-old Jodi Foster starring as a prostitute in Taxi Driver and eleven-year-old Brooke Shields playing a child who runs away from life at a brothel only to be taken in by an abusive older man. And in the following years, while the trope did often continue to hold onto the sexualized side of the character type, the innocence and naiveté began to return once more. Take Drew Barrymore’s Julia Sullivan from 1998’s The Wedding Singer. She’s a grown, engaged adult, but that doesn’t stop her from also being a sweet and innocent, baby-faced Ingenue. Especially when compared to her seductress cousin Holly, Julia is naive and inexperienced in the ways of the world. She also completes another big part of the trope, helping to guide the male character to his true desires, as she helps Robbie Hart discover what he really wants out of life.

Chapter 2: The “Ingenue” in Real Life

Just like Mary Pickford, many young actresses have been put into the “ingenue” box off screen during their rise in Hollywood. In the early 20th century, actresses like Pickford were dubbed such for their youthful innocence on screen (which they then had to keep up in real life,) but by later in the century, pretty much any young actress would get strapped with the moniker. From 90s wild child Drew Barrymore to 2000s bad girl bombshell Megan Fox, the title started to become used for any “hot young female star” in the media, regardless of her demeanor on screen or in real life. Often actresses with little experience that are hired to play secondary roles are called Ingenues; their youth and beauty is generally thought to make up for their lack of experience. Scarlett Johansson was only 17 when she was hired to star as unmoored college grad Charlotte opposite Bill Murray in Lost in Translation. She was a quintessential Ingenue: beautiful enough to be sexualized, but naive and young enough to have a childlike air about her.

This tightrope walk between being sexy enough to be alluring while also being innocent and unthreatening leads to a catch-22 where women can never really win: as they’re real, living human beings and not just idealized characters written by someone else, they’ll often end up tipping “too far” one way or the other and get shamed for doing so. If she embraces her sexuality too much, she’ll become an evil vamp who has lost her innocence, and if she pulls back and doesn’t want to be sexualized she’ll be labeled an uptight prude. We often see this battle play out as child actresses become labeled ingenues in Hollywood and then are publicly blasted for not perfectly performing the trope in every role and in every second of their real life. This often leads to them attempting to totally break free, often by going to extremes to prove that they’re “adults” and no longer trapped in the ingenue liminal space. This can result in the taking on of very sexualized roles or media blitzes.

Anne Hathaway got her start in films like The Princess Diaries and Ella Enchanted; she was young, beautiful, and destined to be pigeonholed as an Ingenue. Like many starlets in this position, she felt the only way to break out of this box was to force Hollywood to see her as an adult, which she accomplished with much more adult roles in the films Havok and Brokeback Mountain. On the other end of the spectrum, Natalie Portman has opened up about being horrified about how sexualized she was by audiences and the media after her role in Leon: The Professional at only 12 years old. She said, “it made me afraid, and it made me [feel] like the way I could be safe was to be like, ‘I’m conservative,’ and ‘I’m serious, and you should respect me,’ and ‘I’m smart,’ and ‘don’t look at me that way.’” Instead of leaning in and trying to prove she was “all grown up” in following roles, she instead pulled back - both from sexualized roles and the spotlight as a whole. Natalie noted that she decided that, “When I was in my teens, I was like, ‘I don’t wanna have any love scenes or make-out scenes’. I would start choosing parts that were less sexy because it made me worried about the way I was perceived and how safe I felt’.”

The trope also restricted characters and actresses across race, sexuality and age, since ingenues always had to be young white girls in love with an older man. When Ginger Rogers proclaimed, in the 1940 film Kitty Foyle, she wasn’t actually free to do anything but choose between two suitors. And her whiteness was a given because ingenues were always white – actresses of color were never labeled as “ingenues” because young women of color were so often seen as sexualized or “impure” on screen.

Even as the constraints of the ingenue changed over time both on screen and real life, it continued to be a trope that restricted actresses and the characters they played to a very limited window of existence that was difficult for them to move beyond. But as more and more actresses began speaking up about the negative impact this label and its implications had on them, we started to see a shift in Hollywood…

Chapter 3: The Death of the Ingenue

While most women called Ingenues today are still beautiful, they are rarely the “innocent” women of Classical Hollywood or stuck in the “sexy baby” roles of the 70s and 80s. Ingenues are now allowed to tackle more evolved roles, playing characters who are both smart and in control of their own sexuality. They are also allowed to be intelligent, sexual, and imperfect human beings off camera, too.

Modern roles now allow for a wide array of actresses, experiences, and relationships. Production companies have started backing projects with substantial roles for women who would typically be left out of the picture, either due to age, race, or any of the other myriad reasons Hollywood might decide a woman “shouldn’t” be on screen. And younger actresses are standing up for themselves, their preferences, and their causes in real life, which is being reflected in strong, evolved roles. They don’t have to play naive anymore, on screen or in real life.

As society has changed over the past century, Hollywood and its tropes have followed. The once forever-young Ingenue has grown up and earned a place at the adult table. It’s no longer required for women to be permanently young, innocent, and beautiful to succeed, but there is unfortunately still a bias. It can still be hard for women to ‘break out’ in Hollywood if they don’t start their career within the trappings of today’s iteration of a noteworthy Hollywood starlet. Importantly, we still need greater inclusivity behind the scenes in Hollywood, which will result in the development of more fully dimensional roles for female characters of all ages, races, orientations, and abilities. And we’re also learning how important it is to allow entertainers the space to lead their private lives in a fulfilling manner without having to curate and micromanage a perfect, innocent image for the press. Thanks to the hard work of women in front of and behind the camera in Hollywood, we’re finally moving in the right direction.

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