Scarlett Ingrid Johansson (/dʒoʊˈhænsən/; born November 22, 1984) is an American actress and singer. She was the world's highest-paid actress in 2018 and 2019, and has featured multiple times on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list. Her films have grossed over $14.3 billion worldwide, making Johansson the highest-grossing actress and ninth-highest-grossing box office star of all time. She is the recipient of several accolades, including a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play and a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards.
Born and raised in Manhattan, New York City, Johansson aspired to be an actress from a young 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 the psychological thriller Match Point (2005). Other works during this period include The Prestige (2006) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008); and the albums Anywhere I Lay My Head (2008) and Break Up (2009), both of which charted on the Billboard 200.
In 2010, Johansson debuted on Broadway in a revival of A View from the Bridge, which won her a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress, and began playing the role of Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Iron Man 2, which won her critical acclaim.[1] Johansson went on to star in the science fiction films Her (2013), Under the Skin (2013), Lucy (2014), and Ghost in the Shell (2017). She received critical acclaim and two Academy Award nominations for playing an actress going through a divorce in the drama Marriage Story (2019) and a single mother in Nazi Germany in the satire Jojo Rabbit (2019).
Early life
Scarlett Ingrid Johansson was born on November 22, 1984,[2] in the Manhattan borough of New York City.[3][4] 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.[5][6] Her mother, Melanie Sloan, is a New Yorker who has worked as a producer. She comes from an Ashkenazi Jewish family from Poland and Russia, originally surnamed Schlamberg,[6] and Johansson has described herself as Jewish.[7][8][9] She has an older sister, Vanessa, also an actress; an older brother, Adrian; and a twin brother, Hunter.[10] Johansson also has an older half-brother, Christian, from her father's first marriage. She holds dual American and Danish citizenship.[11][12]
Johansson attended PS 41, an elementary school in Greenwich Village, Manhattan.[13] Her parents divorced when she was 13.[14][15] Johansson was particularly close to her maternal grandmother, Dorothy Sloan, a bookkeeper and schoolteacher; they often spent time together and Johansson considered Sloan her best friend.[16] Interested in a career in the spotlight from an early age, she often put on song-and-dance routines for her family. She was particularly fond of musical theater and jazz hands.[17][18] She took lessons in tap dance, and states that her parents were supportive of her career choice. She describes her childhood as very ordinary.[19]
As a child, Johansson practiced acting by staring in the mirror until she made herself cry, wanting to be Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis.[20] 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."[20] She shifted her focus to film and theater,[21] making her first stage appearance in the Off-Broadway play Sophistry with Ethan Hawke,[22] in which she had two lines.[21] Around this time, she began studying at Professional Children's School (PCS), a private educational institution for aspiring child actors in Manhattan. At age nine, Johansson made her film debut as John Ritter's daughter in the fantasy comedy North (1994).[21] She says that when she was on the film set, she knew intuitively what to do.[20] Johansson later played minor roles including as the daughter of Sean Connery and Kate Capshaw's characters in the mystery thriller Just Cause (1995), and an art student in If Lucy Fell (1996).[23]
Acting Career
1996–2002: Early roles
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,"[24] 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."[25] Johansson earned a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Lead Female for the role.[26]
After appearing in minor roles in Fall and Home Alone 3 (both 1997), Johansson attracted wider attention for her performance in the film The Horse Whisperer (1998), directed by Robert Redford.[21][27] The drama film, based on the 1995 novel of the same name by Nicholas Evans, tells the story of a talented trainer with a gift for understanding horses, who is hired to help an injured teenager played by Johansson. The actress received an "introducing" credit on this film, although it was her seventh role. On Johansson's maturity, Redford described her as "13 going on 30".[28] 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".[29] For the film, she was nominated for the Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Most Promising Actress.[30] She believed that the film changed many things in her life, realizing that acting is the ability to manipulate one's emotions.[31] 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".[32]
2010–2013: Marvel Cinematic Universe and stage roles
Johansson had aspired to appear on Broadway since childhood. She made her debut in a 2010 revival of Arthur Miller's drama A View from the Bridge.[98][99] Set in the 1950s, in an Italian-American neighborhood in New York, it tells the tragic tale of Eddie (played by Liev Schreiber), who has an inappropriate love for his wife's orphaned niece, Catherine (played by Johansson). After some reservations about playing a teenage character, Johansson agreed to the play when a friend convinced her to take on the part.[100] Ben Brantley of The New York Times wrote of Johansson's performance that she "melts into her character so thoroughly that her nimbus of celebrity disappears".[101] Variety's David Rooney was impressed with the play and Johansson in particular, describing her as the chief performer.[102] She won the 2010 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play.[103] 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.[104]
Johansson played Black Widow in Jon Favreau's Iron Man 2 (2010),[105] a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).[106] 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.[107] Johansson said the character resonated with her, and she admired the superhero's human traits.[108] 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.[109][110] Tim Robey of The Daily Telegraph and Matt Goldberg thought that she had little to do but look attractive.[111][112] 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.[113][75] Johansson earned a Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Actress: Drama nomination for her performance.[114]
Johansson learned some Russian from a former teacher on the phone for her role as Black Widow in The Avengers (2012),[115] another entry from the MCU.[106] 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.[116][117] For her performance, she was nominated for two Teen Choice Awards and three People's Choice Awards.[b] 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.[120] Roger Ebert opined that despite not physically resembling Leigh, she had conveyed her spunk, intelligence, and sense of humor.[121]