But the role marked an important transition for de Havilland, who decided to use the box office success of Gone with the Wind as a springboard to reach a wider array of meaty, more interesting parts, eschewing the ingenues and love interests she had played in the past. Warner Bros. had other plans, and continued to cast her in the same kind of fluffy roles they had in the past. Eventually, de Havilland began to turn down projects, an assertive stance that was unheard of for a woman at the time. To punish her, infamous studio head Jack Warner began to suspend her contract for six month-periods — if she was unwilling to work the way he wanted her to, she wouldn’t work at all. But to top it off, he then used these interruptions as an excuse to extend her seven-year contract beyond its original end date, arguing that she had not actually worked that full amount of time, and had to remain with Warner Bros. for six more months after it expired in 1942.