Scarlett Johansson

The striking quality in Scarlett Johansson’s (birthname: Scarlett Ingrid Johansson) movie career is one of adaptability. But just as striking is how Johansson’s achievements, perhaps most dramatically with her starring role in the MCU blockbuster Black Widow as a female superhero–run against the dominant trends in the movie business. These include the notions that child actors rarely make the transition to adult roles and that female actors have a narrow time window in which to sustain a career.

Her debut role at 9 years old in North (1994), under Rob Reiner’s direction, underlines how Scarlett Johansson violated yet another supposed rule-of-thumb—when you’re starting, you have to begin with small, indie movies and build from there.

Robert Redford was another major actor-turned-director with whom Johansson collaborated as a precocious young actor in The Horse Whisperer (1998). Nevertheless, as a teen actor, she made an early impact in American indie cinema with such striking work as her co-starring roles in Lisa Krueger’s Manny & Lo (1996), Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World (2001), and Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003).

2003 marked a major turning point in Scarlett Johansson’s career when she also starred in Girl with a Pearl Earring opposite Colin Firth. While remaining consistent in her taste for alternating comic and dramatic characters, Johansson’s choices in roles shifted toward a far more adult tone, including a string of movies in which she became Woody Allen’s favored female actor: Match Point (2005), Scoop (2006) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008).

The following twelve years also linked Johansson with major writer-directors (Christopher Nolan’s 2006 The Prestige, Spike Jonze’s 2013 Her, Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013), the Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar! (2016), and Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs (2018)), which also showcased her ongoing interest in performing as a voice actor for animation features.

But it’s with Scarlett Johansson’s aggressive shift in the past decade into roles with superhuman—and even alien—powers, including Under the Skin, Luc Besson’s Lucy (2014), and especially the massively successful Marvel Cinematic Universe as the character of Black Widow that she became the world’s highest-paid, top-earning female star.

The series includes the second highest-grossing movie on record, Avengers: Endgame (2019), which triggered momentum for an unprecedented MCU move and a sign of Johansson’s star power: Her leading role in Black Widow (2021), the first MCU project top-lining a woman.

And yet during the height of her MCU fame and typical of Johansson’s malleable durability, she enjoyed a stunning double-Oscar nomination year in 2019 with Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story and Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit.

Johansson was executive producer and star of the MCU Avengers spin-off, Black Widow (2021), with Florence Pugh, David Harbour, O-T Fagbenle, Olga Kurylenko, William Hurt, Ray Winstone, and Rachel Weisz under Cate Shortland’s direction, and making $380 million theatrically while simultaneously streaming on Disney+, thus blunting the full potential of the movie’s theatrical box-office, which was the basis of a highly publicized lawsuit which Johansson filed against Disney in July 2021 (and settled two months later).

 Scarlett Johansson performed the same voice character in Illumination/Universal Pictures’ animated Sing 1 (2016) and Sing 2 (2021), both written and directed by Garth Jennings and co-starring Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Taron Egerton, Tori Kelly, Nick Kroll, Bobby Cannavale, Pharrell Cannavale, Nick Offerman, Letitia Wright, and Bono, and returning a combined gross of just over $1 billion worldwide.

Johansson delivered a standout performance in the sprawling ensemble of Wes Anderson’s droll Atomic Age Asteroid City (2023), with Jason Schwartzman, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrian Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Stephen Park, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, and Jeff Goldblum, and which premiered at the Cannes film festival before a fair box office return of $54 million.

Johansson was cast by director/writer/star Kristen Scott Thomas for her British family drama, North Star (2023), co-starring Freida Pinto, Sienna Miller, and Emily Beecham and premiering at the Toronto Film Festival. Johansson returned to comedy mode in the Apollo 11 moon landing-themed movie, Fly Me to the Moon (2024), co-starring Channing Tatum, Jim Rash, Ray Romano, and Woody Harrelson under Greg Berlanti’s direction, and released by Columbia Pictures/Sony Releasing.

Scarlett Johansson joined her next franchise project as Elita in the Optimus Prime original tale, Transformers One (2024), directed by Josh Cooley and co-starring Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Buscemi, Laurence Fishburne, and Jon Hamm, and produced via Paramount Animation/Hasbro Entertainment/New Republic Pictures/Di Bonaventura Pictures/Bayhem Films for distributor Paramount Pictures. Johansson led the cast of Mahershala Ali, Rupert Friend, Jonathan Bailey, and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo in Universal Pictures’ third installment, Jurassic World (2025), under the helmsmanship of series director Gareth Edwards and writer David Koepp.

Johansson made her feature directorial debut with the drama, Eleanor the Great (date to be announced), starring June Squibb in the title role, with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jessica Hecht, and Erin Kellyman, and released (for the first time) by TriStar Pictures and Sony Pictures Classics. Johansson reunited with filmmaker Wes Anderson and his wide ensemble for The Phoenician Scheme (date to be announced), co-starring Benicio del Toro, Michael Cera, Bill Murray, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Benedict Cumberbatch, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Rupert Friend, Willem Dafoe, and Bryan Cranston, and produced by American Empirical Pictures and Indian Paintbrush.

Scarlett Johansson took on the dual positions of star and producer on director Andrea Arnold’s biographical thriller, Featherwood (date to be announced), about Carol Blevins, who became an FBI informant on the neo-Nazi Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. Johannson co-starred with Tom Cruise in the Christopher McQuarrie-directed remake of the 1977 Clint Eastwood thriller, The Gauntlet (date to be announced), produced by Eastwood.

Johansson’s philanthropic and social justice work includes aid for Stand Up to Cancer, Oxfam, helping establish the Time’s Up project, speaking at the 2012 Democratic Party National Convention, and working to release three imprisoned human rights activists in Egypt in 2020.