Why Scar-Jo is made of sterner stuff than Marilyn

Why Scarlett is made of sterner stuff than Marilyn

Scarlett in her latest Movie ‘Under the Skin’ where she plays a zombie-like alien in Glasgow.

Paul Whitington

With her hourglass figure and famously voluptuous lips, Scarlett Johansson could easily pass for a 1940s sex siren. Her spectacular looks have made her a recurring favourite on those ridiculous 'Sexiest Woman Alive' lists run by magazines like Esquire and Playboy, and led some to dismiss her as an airheaded Hollywood bimbo.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. She's much more politically active than most of her peers, has campaigned publicly for Barack Obama and others, and until recently was an international ambassador for Oxfam. And while her embattled ex-husband Ryan Reynolds continues to bounce from flop to flop, Ms Johansson has proved an astute and imaginative chooser of roles.

Since she broke through at the age of 19 in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, Scarlett has moved with remarkable ease between comedy, serious drama and all-action blockbusters. She's worked three times with Woody Allen, is one of the stars of the hugely successful Avengers franchise, and has a luminous screen presence best exemplified in period dramas like The Other Boleyn Girl and Girl with the Pearl Earring.

She could easily have traded on her looks and coasted along in romcoms and romances, but instead has sought to challenge herself, and 2014 promises to be her most interesting year yet.

In Spike Jonzes's recently released futuristic comic drama Her, Ms Johansson does a brilliant job of voicing 'Samantha', an artificially intelligent computer operating system with whom Joaquin Phoenix falls in love. She brought warmth and colour to this tricky role, and despite the fact that we never actually see her, was nominated for several awards.

We see plenty of Scarlett in Under the Skin, a remarkable low-budget horror film that's released here next week. Jonathan Glazer's eerie shocker is set in Glasgow and stars Johansson as a zombie-like alien who takes the form of a beautiful seductress to lure unfortunate men to their doom.

She's on screen for virtually the whole film, and the role involved some daunting challenges. Johansson is fully naked on several occasions, ad-libs with non-actors, and in one scene had to crawl through a muddy forest while being pursued by a sex attacker.

It's the kind of scenario most A-listers would run a mile from, but in Under the Skin Johansson conclusively proves that she can transcend her beauty and tackle even the most unglamorous of roles. She's a much better actor than she's generally given credit for, and as she's just shy of 30, the best may yet be to come. She was born in 1984 to a Danish father, Karsten Johansson, and a New York Jewish mother, Melanie Sloan, a producer and film buff who encouraged her daughter's early interest in acting.

She made her movie debut at just nine, opposite a young Elijah Wood in the comic fantasy North, and in 1996 she caught the eye of many critics playing an 11-year-old runaway orphan in Lisa Krueger's drama Manny And Lo.

Her good notices in that film led Robert Redford to cast Scarlett in his 1998 drama The Horse Whisperer. She played Grace, a teenage girl who's traumatised by a riding accident and is nursed back to health by a cowboy who tends to her horse. During the shoot, Redford described the young actress as "13 going on 30", and her poise and performance were greatly praised.

Eye-catching turns in films like Ghost World and the Coen brothers' Man Who Wasn't There followed, but Scarlett was now in her mid-teens and facing the awkward transition from child to adult star. It's a leap that few child actors successfully manage, but she did so with aplomb thanks to two extraordinary performances in 2003.

In Peter Webber's critically acclaimed period drama Girl with a Pearl Earring, she gave a compelling portrayal of Griet, a beautiful maid in the household of Johannes Vermeer with whom the great painter becomes infatuated. But it was Lost in Translation that really got her noticed.

Sofia Coppola's slow-moving comic drama starred Bill Murray as Bob Harris, a jaded American film actor who comes to Tokyo to shoot a whiskey commercial and becomes intrigued by a sad-eyed young woman called Charlotte who haunts the bar of his high-rise hotel. And despite their age difference, Bob and Charlotte begin to fall in love.

This potentially creepy plotline was cleverly handled by Coppola, and Bill Murray was nominated for an Oscar. But Johansson's enigmatic and thoughtful performance was the glue that held Lost in Translation together, and her ability to silently convey emotions was remarkable.

She was nominated for a Golden Globe, won a BAFTA, and at just 18 was suddenly an international star.

As her career developed, it soon became apparent that, unlike Lindsay Lohan and co, young Scarlett knew how to handle herself. Aided by her mother, who's also her manager, she capitalised on the success of Lost in Translation by choosing roles well and wisely in the main.

Of course, there was the odd clanger, like the ill-fated 2005 sci-fi flop The Island, and Frank Miller's much-derided superhero noir, The Spirit (2008). But those flops were the exception rather than the rule, and over the last decade, Johansson's films have developed her talent and expanded her range.

Her collaborations with Woody Allen have been particularly fruitful. They've made three films together, beginning with Match Point, in 2005, and culminating in the excellent Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), which starred Johansson as an American girl who experiments sexually during a summer in Spain.

Scarlett entered the Avengers franchises in 2010 when she starred opposite Robert Downey as the Black Widow in Iron Man 2. She impressed playing a young Janet Leigh in Sacha Gervasi's playful 2012 biopic Hitchcock, and was very convincing as a brassy New York harpy in Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Don Jon (2013).

Perhaps even more impressive, however, has been her sang froid under media fire. In 2011, she was hounded as never before when her three-year marriage to Ryan Reynolds came to an end, but remained dignified and good-humoured throughout. And she bounced back with equal aplomb from the recent SodaStream controversy.

She's often been likened to Marilyn Monroe, but the resemblance is purely physical. Because Scarlett Johansson seems made of sterner stuff than poor old Marilyn: she's a better actress too, and looks likely to enjoy a much longer career in Hollywood.

The SodaStream Affair

In late January, Scarlett became the unlikely focus of a major political row after appearing in a provocative TV ad during the Super Bowl.

Her straw-sucking turn in a promo for SodaStream attracted a lot of attention, but when it emerged that the drinks company runs a factory in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, all hell broke loose.

Ms Johansson has been a global ambassador for Oxfam since 2005, but the charity opposes all trade from Israeli West Bank settlements, and were quick to distance themselves from the star's 

endorsements. A few weeks ago, Ms Johansson duly resigned from her Oxfam role, but went down fighting.

She had, she said, a "fundamental difference of opinion" with Oxfam, and was herself a "supporter of economic cooperation and social interaction between a democratic Israel and Palestine".

And while some have accused Scarlett of political naivety, the actress has shrugged the scandal off, saying "I don't see myself as a role model".