Scarlett Johansson: I’m not good at hiding my emotions
Even for the most talented and intelligent actors, there is still a high risk that their work will fail, so it is rare to see moments where project after project, all of them succeed. . Yet Scarlett Johansson is actually doing it. In the first half of 2019, she played the role in Avengers: Endgame – the highest-grossing global film of all time, and her own film about the character Black Widow is also scheduled to be released in May 2020. In the second half of 2019, Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit – two smaller-scale works, brought her praise from experts, helping her receive an acting nomination (with Marrige Story) during the Oscar season. recently.
Everything seems to make Scarlett Johansson proud and at the same time disturbed. “I worked really hard for a really long time. So maybe this is the icing on the cake,” she says, half-sitting, half-lying on a sofa at a New York photography studio at the end of a long work day. There was a note of caution emanating from the statement, not one that showed insecurity or lack of confidence, just that Scarlett was the type of person who didn’t celebrate something too soon. “I’m definitely a perfectionist (waiting for the other shoe to drop,) but I’m learning to change that habit,” she said.
Scarlett Johansson is 35 years old, and has been working for 25 years. She has been acting since she was 9 years old when she joined North; At the age of 13, he received an important role in The Horse Whisperer, and at the age of 18, he made a breakthrough with Lost in Translation, starting his career as an adult actor. But not everything is easy, she said: “Over time, my feelings towards work withered and gradually slipped away. Many times I feel like I can’t feel anything that’s important or interesting to me anymore.”
Now those worries seem less important, because she’s a mother (her daughter, Rose, is five), and she has other priorities. “Now that I have children… it’s not that I’m not influenced by my career anymore, I guess I’m still influenced by it but in different aspects than in the past. In the past, perhaps I placed a lot of importance on what others thought of me as well as conflicts in my career, but now I no longer worry about that. I’m at a good time in my career, a time when I can comfortably wait for good projects.”
Scarlett Johansson said Jojo Rabbit is one such work, she knew this as soon as she read Taika Waititi’s script. “The script is great. It’s a gem. I mean: it’s perfect. I’ve read a lot of scripts over the past 20 years, and when I come across something that’s tight and interesting and touching and unusual, I’m always like, ‘Wow, that’s special.’ Taika is capable of completing it the way it deserves to be done.”’
And the moment she read the Jojo Rabbit script, she immediately knew how she should play the role of Rosie, a mother trapped between her young son who idolizes Hitler and the dictates of her conscience. “The character of Rosie seemed to come to life from the page. In my mind, she is warm, gentle and brings a sense of security to others. I wanted to show her like that, a vivacious, loving person, so that people would truly feel a deep loss when she was no longer present. I love her. I have to say this because I really loved her.”
After Jojo Rabbit, opportunities continued to come to Scarlett Johansson when she became half of a couple preparing for divorce in the movie Marriage Story. Previously, when she was just over 20 years old, she almost collaborated with Noah Baumbach, writer and director of Marriage Story. When the project failed, she thought Noah would never contact her again. But then a few years later, he arranged to meet her, revealing to her that he was writing a story about divorce, and she told him she was going through the same thing (with Romain Dauriac, then her husband). Scarlett’s second.)
Scarlett Johansson is careful not to exaggerate this personal experience. On the one hand, she admitted that this partly helped her in her acting: “I share the same experience with the character, or with anyone who has ever been divorced. In a way, I understand the bittersweetness of it, all the intertwining feelings that the character has. I understand because I went through it too.” On the other hand, she said her experience of this comes more from memories of her parents’ failed marriage than from her own personal story.
Furthermore, although both she and Adam Driver were praised for their convincing moments depicting how their marriage deteriorated even though they were both still in love, Scarlett Johansson emphasized that they were by no means impromptu outbursts. “What surprises everyone about the movie is that every hesitation, every unfinished line, every second the actor speaks, it’s all written in the script. They are written too Good. Every word that comes out of my mouth is scripted, nothing is improvised. Noah writes extremely specifically about them.”
Everything, with surprising subtlety and empathy, is described in excruciating detail: the toxic twist at the end of a relationship (especially when children are involved); the way two people, despite their good intentions, suddenly find themselves in a rut; and how defense turns into the most powerful attack. It is during the conflict’s worst moment that Baumbach displays incredible humor through the acting juggling act between the trio of veteran actors Laura Dern, Alan Alda and Ray Liotta as the opposing lawyers. but the most special is still the one-on-one duel scene between Scarlett and Adam. It seems that in this scene there is some kind of strength mixed with real-life experience in Johansson, signaling a good omen for her upcoming career.
