Scarlett Johansson practised acting by staring into a mirror until she cried
As a small child in Manhattan, Scarlett Johansson rehearsed by gazing at her reflection until tears came, hoping to be Judy Garland. At seven she was crushed when an agent signed her brother instead. She pressed on anyway, and her leading roles have since grossed over 15.4 billion dollars worldwide.
Born in New York in 1984, Johansson is the daughter of a Danish-born architect and a New York producer whose Jewish family had fled Poland and Russia; she holds both American and Danish citizenship and has a twin brother, Hunter. She put on song-and-dance shows for relatives and took tap lessons. Auditioning for commercials bored her quickly, since she had no wish to sell Wonder Bread, so she turned to stage and film, first speaking two lines in an off-Broadway play alongside Ethan Hawke.
Her first paid job, at nine, was a sketch on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, followed that year by her film debut in North. Robert Redford, who directed and co-starred in The Horse Whisperer, called her 13 going on 30, and Ghost World in 2001 gave her a cult breakthrough. After finishing school she applied to the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and was turned down.
The rejection hardly mattered. In 2003 she made Lost in Translation for Sofia Coppola, who had spotted her years earlier in Manny and Lo and likened her to a young Lauren Bacall; the film cost 4 million dollars and earned 119 million, winning Johansson a BAFTA. That same year she played the servant Griet opposite Colin Firth's Vermeer in Girl with a Pearl Earring, after the director had auditioned 150 actors. Critics soon called her one of the most versatile performers of her generation.
Global fame arrived with Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, whom she played in eight Marvel films between 2010 and 2021. She also won a Tony for a Broadway revival of A View from the Bridge, released two albums that charted on the Billboard 200, and in 2019 earned lead and supporting actress Oscar nominations in the same year for Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit, a rare double.
Source: Scarlett Johansson
