Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett
Ingrid Scarlett ( born November 22, 1984) is an American
actress. The world's highest-paid actress in 2018 and 2019, she has featured
multiple times on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list. Time magazine named her one of
the 100 most influential people in the world in 2021. Her films have grossed
over $14.3 billion worldwide, making Johansson the highest-grossing box office
star of all time. She has received various accolades, including a Tony Award
and a British Academy Film Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy
Awards and five Golden Globe Awards.
Born
to a Danish father and an American mother, Johansson aspired to be an actress
from an early age and first appeared on stage in an off-Broadway play as a
child actor. She made her film debut in the fantasy comedy North (1994), and
gained early recognition for her roles in Manny & Lo (1996), The Horse
Whisperer (1998), and Ghost World (2001). Johansson shifted to adult roles in
2003 with her performances in Lost in Translation, which won her a BAFTA Award
for Best Actress, and Girl with a Pearl Earring. She was nominated for Golden
Globe Awards for these films, and for playing a troubled teenager in the drama
A Love Song for Bobby Long (2004) and a seductress in psychological thriller
Match Point (2005). The latter was her first collaboration with Woody Allen,
who later directed her in Scoop (2006) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008).
Johansson's other works of this period include The Prestige (2006) and the
albums Anywhere I Lay My Head (2008) and Break Up (2009), both of which charted
on the Billboard 200.
Scarlett Scarlett Wiki/Bio/Age
Scarlett
Ingrid Johansson was born on November 22, 1984, in the Manhattan borough of New
York City. Her father, Karsten Olaf Johansson, is an architect originally from
Copenhagen, Denmark. Her paternal grandfather, Ejner Johansson, was an art
historian, screenwriter, and film director, whose own father was Swedish. Her mother, New Yorker Melanie Sloan, has
worked as a producer; she comes from an Ashkenazi Jewish family who fled Poland
and Russia, originally surnamed Schlamberg, and Johansson identifies as Jewish.
She has an older sister, Vanessa, also an actress; an older brother, Adrian;
and a twin brother, Hunter. She also has an older half-brother, Christian, from
her father's first marriage. Johansson holds dual American and Danish
citizenship. On a 2017 episode of PBS's
Finding Your Roots, she discovered that her maternal great-grandfather's
brother and extended family died during the Holocaust in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Education
Johansson attended PS 41, an elementary school in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. Her parents divorced when she was thirteen. She was particularly close to her maternal grandmother, Dorothy Sloan, a bookkeeper and schoolteacher; they often spent time together and Johansson considered Dorothy her best friend. Interested in a career in the spotlight from an early age, Johansson often put on song-and-dance routines for her family. She was particularly fond of musical theater and jazz hands. She took lessons in tap dance, and states that her parents were supportive of her career choice. She has described her childhood as very ordinary.
As
a child, Johansson practiced acting by staring in the mirror until she made
herself cry, wanting to be like Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis. At age seven, she was devastated when a talent
agent signed one of her brothers instead of her, but she later decided to
become an actress anyway. She enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and
began auditioning for commercials, but soon lost interest: "I didn't want
to promote Wonder Bread." She shifted her focus to film and theater, making
her first stage appearance in the off-Broadway play Sophistry with Ethan Hawke,
in which she had two lines. Around this
time, she began studying at the Professional Children's School, a private
educational institution for aspiring child actors in Manhattan.
Acting career
Early work and breakthrough (1994–2002)
At
age nine, Johansson made her film debut as John Ritter's daughter in the fantasy
comedy North (1994). She says that when she was on the film set, she knew
intuitively what to do. She later played
minor roles such as the daughter of Sean Connery's and Kate Capshaw's
characters in the mystery thriller Just Cause (1995), and an art student in If
Lucy Fell (1996). Johansson's first leading role was as Amanda, the younger
sister of a pregnant teenager who runs away from her foster home in Manny &
Lo (1996) alongside Aleksa Palladino and her brother, Hunter. Her performance
received positive reviews: one written for the San Francisco Chronicle noted,
"[the film] grows on you, largely because of the charm of ... Scarlett
Johansson,"while critic Mick LaSalle, writing for the same paper,
commented on her "peaceful aura", and believed, "If she can get
through puberty with that aura undisturbed, she could become an important actress."
Johansson earned a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Lead
Female for the role.
After appearing in minor roles in Fall and Home Alone 3 (both in 1997), Johansson attracted wider attention for her performance in the film The Horse Whisperer (1998), co-starring director Robert Redford. Based on the 1995 novel of the same name by Nicholas Evans, the drama tells the story of a talented horse trainer, who is hired to help an injured teenager (Johansson) and her horse back to health. Johansson received an "introducing" credit on this film; it was her seventh role. On Johansson's maturity, Redford described her as "13 going on 30". Todd McCarthy of Variety commented that Johansson "convincingly conveys the awkwardness of her age and the inner pain of a carefree girl suddenly laid low by horrible happenstance". For the film, she was nominated for the Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Most Promising Actress. She believed that the film changed many things in her life, realizing that acting is the ability to manipulate one's emotions. On finding good roles as a teenager, Johansson said it was hard for her as adults wrote the scripts and they "portray kids like mall rats and not seriously ... Kids and teenagers just aren't being portrayed with any real depth."
Johansson
later appeared in My Brother the Pig (1999) and in the Coen brothers' neo-noir
film The Man Who Wasn't There (2001). Her breakthrough came playing a cynical
outcast in Terry Zwigoff's black comedy Ghost World (2001), an adaptation of
Daniel Clowes' graphic novel of the same name. Johansson auditioned for the
film via a tape from New York, and Zwigoff believed her to be "a unique,
eccentric person, and right for that part".The film premiered at the 2001
Seattle International Film Festival; although a box office failure, it has
since developed a cult status. Johansson
was credited with "sensitivity and talent [that] belie her age" by an
Austin Chronicle critic and won a Toronto Film Critics Association Award for
Best Supporting Actress for her performance.
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With
David Arquette, Johansson appeared in the horror comedy Eight Legged Freaks
(2002) about a collection of spiders exposed to toxic waste, causing them to
grow gigantic and begin killing and harvesting. After graduating from
Professional Children's School that year, she applied to New York University's
Tisch School of the Arts; she decided to focus on her film career when she was
rejected.
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Marvel Cinematic Universe and worldwide recognition (2010–2013)
Aspiring
to appear on Broadway since childhood, Johansson made her debut in a 2010
revival of Arthur Miller's drama A View from the Bridge. Set in the 1950s in an Italian-American
neighborhood in New York, it tells the tragic tale of Eddie (Liev Schreiber),
who has an inappropriate love for his wife's orphaned niece, Catherine
(Johansson). After initial reservations about playing a teenage character,
Johansson was convinced by a friend to take on the part. Ben Brantley of The
New York Times wrote Johansson "melts into her character so thoroughly
that her nimbus of celebrity disappears". Variety's David Rooney was
impressed with the play and Johansson in particular, describing her as the
chief performer. She won the 2010 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured
Actress in a Play. Some critics and Broadway actors criticized the award committee's
decision to reward the work of mainstream Hollywood actors, including
Johansson. In response, she said that she understood the frustration, but had
worked hard for her accomplishments.
Johansson
played Black Widow in Jon Favreau's Iron Man 2 (2010), a part of the Marvel
Cinematic Universe (MCU). Before she
secured the role, she dyed her hair red to convince Favreau that she was right
for the part, and undertook stunt and strength training to prepare for the
role. Johansson said the character resonated with her, and she admired the
superhero's human traits. The film earned $623.9 million against its $200
million budget, and received generally positive reviews from critics, although
reviewers criticized how her character was written. Tim Robey of The Daily
Telegraph and Matt Goldberg thought that she had little to do but look
attractive In 2011, Johansson played the role of Kelly, a zookeeper in the
family film We Bought a Zoo alongside Matt Damon. The film got mainly favorable
reviews, and Anne Billson praised Johansson for bringing depth to a rather uninteresting
character. Johansson earned a Teen
Choice Award for Choice Movie Actress: Drama nomination for her performance.
Johansson
learned some Russian from a former teacher on the phone for her role as Black
Widow in The Avengers (2012), another
entry from the MCU. The film received mainly positive reviews and broke many
box office records, becoming the third highest-grossing film both in the United
States and worldwide. For her
performance, she was nominated for two Teen Choice Awards and three People's
Choice Awards. Later that year,
Johansson portrayed actress Janet Leigh in Sacha Gervasi's Hitchcock, a
behind-the-scenes drama about the making of Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film
Psycho. Roger Ebert wrote that Johansson
did not look much like Leigh, but conveyed her spunk, intelligence, and sense
of humor.
In
January 2013, Johansson starred in a Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,
directed by Rob Ashford. Set in the Mississippi Delta, it examines the
relationships within the family of Big Daddy (Ciarán Hinds), primarily between
his son Brick (Benjamin Walker) and Maggie (Johansson). Her performance received mixed reviews. Entertainment
Weekly's Thom Geier wrote Johansson "brings a fierce fighting spirit"
to her part, but Joe Dziemianowicz from
Daily News called her performance "alarmingly one-note". The 2013
Sundance Film Festival hosted the premiere of Joseph Gordon-Levitt's
directorial debut, Don Jon. In this
romantic comedy-drama, she played the pornography-addicted title character's
girlfriend. Gordon-Levitt wrote the role for Johansson, who had previously
admired his acting work. The film received positive reviews and Johansson's
performance was highlighted by critics. Claudia Puig of USA Today considered it
to be one of her best performances.
In
2013, Johansson voiced the character Samantha, a self-aware computer operating
system, in Spike Jonze's film Her, replacing Samantha Morton in the role. The
film premiered at the 8th Rome International Film Festival, where Johansson won
Best Actress; she was also nominated for the Critics' Choice Movie Award for
Best Supporting Actress. Johansson was
intimidated by the role's complexity, and found her recording sessions for the
role challenging but liberating. Peter Travers believed Johansson's voice in
the film was "sweet, sexy, caring, manipulative, scary [and]
award-worthy". Time's Richard Corliss called her performance
"seductive and winning", and Her was rated as one of the best films
of 2013. She also won the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress at the 40th
Saturn Awards in 2014 for her performance. Johansson was cast in Jonathan
Glazer's science fiction film Under the Skin (2013) as an extraterrestrial
creature disguised as a human femme fatale who preys on men in Scotland. The
project, an adaptation of Michel Faber's novel of the same name, took nine
years to complete. For the role, she learned to drive a van and speak in an
English accent. Johansson improvised conversations with non-professional actors
on the street, who did not know they were being filmed. It was released to
generally positive reviews, with particular praise for Johansson. Erin Whitney,
writing for The Huffington Post, considered it to be her finest performance to
that point, and noted that it was her first fully nude role. Author Maureen Foster wrote, "How much
depth, breadth, and range Johansson mines from her character's very limited
allowance of emotional response is a testament to her acting prowess that is,
as the film goes on, increasingly stunning." It earned Johansson a BIFA
Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a British Independent Film
nomination.
Blockbuster films and critical acclaim (2014–2020)
Continuing her work in the MCU, Johansson reprised her role as Black Widow in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014). In the film, she joins forces with Captain America (Chris Evans) and Falcon (Anthony Mackie) to uncover a conspiracy within S.H.I.E.L.D., while facing a mysterious assassin known as the Winter Soldier. Johansson and Evans wrote their own dialogue for several scenes they had together. Johansson was attracted to her character's way of doing her job, employing her feminine wiles and not her physical appeal. The film was a critical and commercial success, grossing over $714 million worldwide. Critic Odie Henderson saw genuine emotional shorthand". The role earned her a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination.
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Johansson played a supporting role in the film Chef (2014), alongside Robert Downey, Jr., Sofía Vergara, and director Jon Favreau. It grossed over $45 million at the box office and was well received by critics. The Chicago Sun-Times writer Richard Roeper found the film "funny, quirky and insightful, with a bounty of interesting supporting characters".
In 2015 and 2016, Johansson again played Black Widow in the MCU films Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War. During filming of the former, a mixture of close-ups, concealing costumes, stunt doubles and visual effects were used to hide her pregnancy. Both films earned more than $1.1 billion, ranking among the highest-grossing films of all time. For Civil War, Johansson earned her second nomination for Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress in an Action Movie and her fourth for Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Earlier in 2016, Johansson had featured
in the Coen brothers' well-received comedy film Hail, Caesar! about a
"fixer" working in the classical Hollywood cinema, trying to discover
what happened to a cast member who vanished during the filming of a biblical
epic; Johansson plays an actress who becomes pregnant while her film is in
production. She also voiced Kaa in Jon Favreau's live-action adaptation of
Disney's The Jungle Book, and Ash in the animated musical comedy film Sing
(both 2016). That year she also narrated an audiobook of Lewis Carroll's
children's novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Public Image
Johansson
is described as a sex symbol by the media. The Sydney Morning Herald describes her as
"the embodiment of male fantasy". During the filming of Match Point, director
Woody Allen remarked upon her attractiveness, calling her "beautiful"
and "sexually overwhelming". In 2014, The New Yorker film critic
Anthony Lane wrote that "she is evidently, and profitably, aware of her
sultriness, and of how much, down to the last inch, it contributes to the contours
of her reputation." Johansson has expressed displeasure at being
sexualized and maintains that a preoccupation with one's attractiveness does
not last. She lost the role of Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon
Tattoo (2011) because the film's director David Fincher found her "too
sexy" for the part.
Johansson
ranks highly in various beauty listings. Maxim included her in their Hot 100 list
from 2006 to 2014. She has been named "Sexiest Woman Alive" twice by
Esquire (2006 and 2013) and has been included in similar listings by Playboy
(2007), Men's Health (2011), and FHM (since 2005). She was named GQ's Babe of
the Year in 2010. Madame Tussauds New York museum unveiled a wax statue of her
in 2015.
Johansson
was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in June
2004. In 2006, she appeared on Forbes' Celebrity 100 list and again in 2014,
2015, 2018 and 2019. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in May
2012. In 2021, she appeared on the Time 100, Time's annual list of the 100 most
influential people in the world. Johansson was included on Forbes' annual list
of the world's highest-paid actresses from 2014 to 2016, with respective
earnings of $17 million, $35.5 million, and $25 million. She would later top
the list in 2018 and 2019, with earnings of $40.5 million and $56 million,
respectively. She was the highest-grossing actor of 2016, with a total of $1.2
billion. As a result, IndieWire credited her for taking on risky roles. As of
September 2019, her films have grossed over $5.2 billion in North America and
over $14.3 billion worldwide, making
Johansson the third-highest-grossing box-office star of all time both domestically
and worldwide as well as the highest-grossing actress of all time in North
America.
Johansson
has appeared in advertising campaigns for Calvin Klein, Dolce & Gabbana,
L'Oréal, and Louis Vuitton and has
represented the Spanish brand Mango since 2009. She was the first Hollywood
celebrity to represent a champagne producer, appearing in advertisements for
Moët & Chandon. In January 2014, the Israeli company SodaStream, which
makes home-carbonation products, hired Johansson as its first global brand
ambassador, a relationship that commenced with a television commercial during
Super Bowl XLVIII on February 2, 2014. This created some controversy, as
SodaStream at that time operated a plant in Israeli-occupied territory in the
West Bank.
Personal life
While
attending the Professional Children's School, Johansson dated classmate Jack
Antonoff from 2001 to 2002. She dated her Black Dahlia co-star Josh Hartnett
for about two years until the end of 2006. According to Hartnett, they broke up
because their busy schedules kept them apart. Johansson began dating Canadian actor Ryan
Reynolds in 2007. They became engaged in May 2008, married in September 2008 on
Vancouver Island, separated in December
2010 and divorced in July 2011.
In
November 2012, Johansson began dating Frenchman Romain Dauriac, the owner of an
advertising agency. They became engaged
the following September. The pair divided their time between New York City and
Paris. She gave birth to their daughter in 2014. Johansson and Dauriac married
that October in Philipsburg, Montana. They separated in mid-2016 and divorced
in September 2017. Johansson began
dating Saturday Night Live co-head writer and Weekend Update co-host Colin Jost
in May 2017. In May 2019, the two were engaged. They married in October 2020,
at their New York home. She gave birth to their son in August 2021. Johansson
resides in New York and Los Angeles.
In
September 2011, nude photographs of Johansson hacked from her cell phone were
leaked online. She said the pictures had been sent to her then-husband, Ryan
Reynolds, three years prior to the incident. Following an FBI investigation,
the hacker was arrested, pled guilty, and was sentenced to ten years in prison.
In 2014, Johansson won a lawsuit against
French publisher JC Lattès over libelous statements about her relationships in
the novel The First Thing We Look At by Grégoire Delacourt. She was awarded
$3,400; she had claimed $68,000.
Johansson
has criticized the media for promoting an image that causes unhealthy diets and
eating disorders among women. In an essay she wrote for The Huffington Post,
she encouraged people to maintain a healthy body. She posed nude for the March 2006 cover of
Vanity Fair alongside actress Keira Knightley and fully clothed fashion
designer Tom Ford. The photograph
sparked controversy as some believed it demonstrated that women are forced to
flaunt their sexuality more often than men.
Politics
Johansson
was registered as an independent, at least through 2008, and campaigned for
Democratic candidate John Kerry in the 2004 United States presidential
election. When George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004, she said she was
disappointed.
In
January 2008, her campaign for Democratic candidate Barack Obama included
appearances in Iowa targeted at younger voters, an appearance at Cornell College, and a speaking engagement at Carleton College
in Northfield, Minnesota, on Super Tuesday, 2008. Johansson appeared in the
music video for rapper will.i.am's song, "Yes We Can" (2008),
directed by Jesse Dylan; the song was inspired by Obama's speech after the 2008
New Hampshire primary. In February 2012, Johansson and Anna Wintour hosted a
fashion launch of clothing and accessories, whose proceeds went to the Obama's
re-election campaign. She addressed voters at the Democratic National
Convention in September 2012, calling for Obama's re-election and for more
engagement from young voters. She
encouraged women to vote for Obama and condemned Mitt Romney for his opposition
to Planned Parenthood.
Johansson
publicly endorsed and supported Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer's 2013
run for New York City Comptroller by hosting a series of fundraisers. To
encourage people to vote in the 2016 presidential election, in which Johansson
endorsed Hillary Clinton, she appeared in a commercial alongside her Marvel
Cinematic Universe co-star Robert Downey Jr., and Joss Whedon. In 2017, she
spoke at the Women's March on Washington, addressing Donald Trump's presidency
and stating that she would support the president if he works for women's rights
and stops withdrawing federal funding for Planned Parenthood. In the 2020
Democratic presidential primaries, Johansson endorsed Elizabeth Warren,
referring to Warren as "thoughtful and progressive but realistic".
In
December 2020, three members of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, an
Egyptian civil rights organization, were released from prison in Egypt, after
Johansson had described their detention circumstances and demanded the trio's
release.