The two-time Oscar nominee for the films Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit spoke of the ordeal she suffered in the film industry; Although her success is evident, she talked about how the bumpy road was to reach it.
Scarlett Johansson is one of the most famous actresses in Hollywood and with her roles in recent movies like Black Widow, Marriage Story, and Jojo Rabbit, she continued to surprise the public with her talent. Although now the actress has moved away from the screens to dedicate herself to being a mother after welcoming her son Cosmo last year and has become an entrepreneur, beyond the successes, she took a journey of introspection in a recent episode of the podcast "Armchair Expert", by Dax Shepard, where he showed the less pleasant face of the industry.
Scarlett's history in Hollywood has not been an easy one, especially since she hers that her career would soon end as she was hypers- by the industry when she was very young. She also learned to juggle acting with being a mother after having her daughter Rose Dorothy in 2014 and going through a difficult separation as she built her career.
The actress said that she found herself so "objectified" and "typecast" while she was young that it made her lose hope that it was possible to diversify her characters. “I became sort of an object and was so typecast in this way that I felt like I wasn't getting job offers for what I wanted to do,” she said.
Who gave life to Black Widow revived how she felt about how others perceived her at that time and she went back to 2003, when she, at the age of 17, was chosen to play a character five years older in Lost in Translation.
“I think people think I'm 40 (she thought she was then). Somehow, it stopped being something desirable and something I was fighting against,” she added. “I think everyone thought that she was older and that she had been acting for a long time. I got pigeonholed into this weird hypers- thing. I felt like my career was over: It was like: this is the kind of career you have, these are the roles you've played. And I was like, 'Is this it?'"
Scarlett began auditioning as a child, making her professional debut as an actress at the age of eight in the theater, in the play Sophistry. Then, a year later, she got her first movie job with the movie A Boy Called North, in 1994 and starring Elijah Wood. After her, her performance in The Man Who Whispered Horses, under the direction of Robert Redford, brought her more recognition, while she also shared credits with Thora Birch in Ghost World, in 2001.
Scarlett sees a change in Hollywood
After the first plunge into Hollywood, the actress dedicated herself to more commercial cinema, with some romantic comedies such as What Happens to Men in 2009 and her foray into the Marvel universe as Black Widow in 2020, where she shared credits with another of the actresses whose name sounds strong, Florence Pugh. On this aspect and for Dax Shepard, the Oscar nominee clarified that she considered that times have changed and that younger actors, like Florence herself or Zendaya (who swept recent awards with her role in Euphoria), are no longer pigeonholed. and they are much more versatile in their roles.
“I see the younger actors who are in their 20s, they seem to be allowed to be all these different things,” Johansson added. “It is also another time. We're not really allowed to pigeonhole other actors anymore, luckily, right? The people are much more dynamic.”
“I've realized that it's important to understand progress and change when it's really significant,” she said. “You take two steps forward and two steps back, and then it gets better and then it gets worse. It is not something finite. I think if you don't leave space for people to notice, then real incremental change doesn't happen."
According to Vogue, many have wanted to see in Scarlett a reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe in the 21st century, in an aesthetic that she exploited as the image of Dolce & Gabanna. Although she hasn't been seen on the big screen, her next project is Asteroid City, her first film with Wes Anderson. She will also share credits with Sienna Miller and Emily Beecham in My Mother's Wedding.
