Scarlett Johansson
Interview By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com
Scarlett Johansson is only twenty-one years old, but she already has the poise and body of work of a major star. Although her big breakthrough came with 2003's Oscar-winning Lost in Translation, she's experienced the full gamut of the Hollywood experience: from the indie world (Ghost World, Girl with a Pearl Earring) to the mainstream (In Good Company, The Island) to the bizarre (yeah, she was also in Eight-Legged Freaks and the SpongeBob movie.) Now she's found a new role: Woody Allen's new favorite actress. After a supporting turn in last year's critical favorite Match Point, she re-teams with the director for this summer's Scoop.
After the wickedly dark Match Point, the comedy Scoop is a return to form for Woody Allen, a prospect which delighted Johansson. "What I loved about the script it that it remained me very much of like, a classic Woody Allen movie. You know, it's got the love interest, the murder mystery, this kind of Sherlock Holmes, Scotland Yard thing that I think he thinks is kind of funny."
Yes, like Match Point, Allen has once again filmed a movie entirely in London and not his long-standing home base of New York City. Johansson downplays the shift. "He's certainly not abandoned New York," she says, noting he still lives and writes stateside. "He shoots there because financially it makes sense for him'and I think it's very comparable, as a big city, to a place like New York."
Although she notes that apparently he can only stretch his wings so far. "Any time we shot in nature, he was, like, having a heart attack."
Scoop tells the story of Johannson's student journalist visiting London who happens upon, you guessed it, a big story. It involves a magician (Allen), a British aristocrat who might be a serial killer (Hugh Jackman), and the ghost of a dead reporter who tries to help her along the way (Deadwood's Ian McShane).
"She's kind of an idiot," Johansson says of her character Sondra, who, in the classic Allen mold, is often a blabbering bundle of nerves. "She is, as Woody would lovingly call it, a twit." Not so for Jackman's role as the charming Peter Lyman. "I think that there's a small group of leading men that are actors like Hugh Jackman, who's this incredibly charismatic, gorgeous, talented, charming guy. He's like an old movie star. He's a real movie star. I always say he's kind of like a William Holden type, or Cary Grant. He's got this incredible charisma, and a darkness, but he's also just so charming."
Similar raves can be heard about the mastermind himself. "I've always admired him as a writer and a director," she says. "And as a comedian," she adds. Oh, one more: "And I've always loved him as an actor." In fact, Allen's acting often kept the rest of the cast in stitches. "Hugh Jackman was laughing hysterically in each take, and Woody would turn to him and be like, 'I'm supposed to be an idiot, you can't be laughing at me!'" Allen wrote Scoop with her in mind after Johansson expressed a desire to act with Allen on the Match Point set. "I said, 'you know it's a shame, I wish we could be acting together, because it would be a lot of fun''It's sort of our off-screen banter, on screen."
Bantering with Woody Allen, romancing Hugh Jackman'it's a far cry from her childhood days of getting tenth billing in Home Alone 3. Johansson doesn't let the fortune of her sudden success escape her. "I think I've just got incredibly lucky," she says of her younger roles. "Even [filming] Ghost World I was like, fifteen. And even doing Lost in Translation, I was 17 when we shot that." The constant has always been her love of filmmaking. "I was always focused on my career. You know, I considered college for some time, [but] I mean, I've always loved filmmaking and I've always loved acting."
The roles are hardly stopping for her, either: she just finished filming The Nanny Diaries, which comes out in 2007. Before that, though, she's got two additional movies coming out before the end of the year, both with high profiles. The first is The Black Dahlia, a Brian De Palma-helmed noir, based on a James Ellroy novel about the real-life 1940s murder case. It co-stars Josh Hartnett, Hilary Swank and Aaron Eckhart. Then comes Christopher Nolan's The Prestige, which stars Jackman and Christian Bale as dueling magicians at the turn of the century.
"Brian De Palma made an absolutely film noir piece, in every sense of the word," she says of Dahlia. "The dialogue and everything is absolutely James Ellroy and it sounds great' The Prestige, of course again I'm with Hugh and Christian Bale." She notes that she was excited by working with Jackman again, as well as the magical aspects of the story. (The prospect of working with the director of Memento and Batman Begins probably helped, too.)
Despite working nonstop, Johansson tries to remain as normal as she can, avoiding the flashbulbs of the paparazzi whenever possible. "I never really think about being famous," she says. "I find that in New York in particular, most people are very generous with space, and I think that's why a lot of actors live here." So does that mean she'll be gracing the Broadway stages anytime soon' Not in the near future, but maybe if her schedule every cleared up, she says. "I would love to do theater, if I found the right play, if it was the right time. Nothing would make me more incredibly nervous."
