Scarlett as: Laura
Genre(s): Drama | Sci-fi | Thriller
Written by: Walter Campbell, Jonathan Glazer
Directed by: Jonathan Glazer
Other Cast: Jeremy McWilliams, Lynsey Taylor Mackay, Paul Brannigan, Adam Pearson
Release Date: April 4, 2014 (Limited Release)
Production Budget: $13m
Total Worldwide Gross: $5.38m
Filming Locations: Glasgow, Scotland

From visionary director Jonathan Glazer comes a stunning career transformation, a masterpiece of existential science fiction that journeys to the heart of what it means to be human, extraterrestrial — or something in between. A voluptuous woman of unknown origin combs the highways in search of isolated or forsaken men, luring a succession of lost souls into an otherworldly lair. They are seduced, stripped of their humanity, and never heard from again. Based on the novel by Michel Faber, Under the Skin examines human experience from the perspective of an unforgettable heroine who grows too comfortable in her borrowed skin, until she is abducted into humanity with devastating results.

Production Notes

Scarlett worked with dialect coach Paula Jack in order to perfect her character’s English accent.

Gemma Arterton, Eva Green, January Jones, Abbie Cornish, and Olivia Wilde were all reportedly considered to play the lead role.

Adam Pearson, who plays the disfigured man that is lured into the vehicle, broke his leg when he was struck by a cab on his way to audition for his role. Director Jonathan Glazer auditioned him the next day at the hospital and gave him the job.

Appeared on many critics “top ten” end-of-year lists of the best films of 2014. Publications honoring the film included Rolling Stone, The Guardian, Sight & Sound, and The Washington Post.

Character Quotes

Quoting: Scarlett Johansson

On her character: When we see her initially, our immediate instinct is not to sympathise with her, because what she’s doing is so horrific. She really has no empathy. But it’s not because she’s psychotic, she’s just a different species. It’s like a lion hunting a zebra. She is not driven by evil. She has absolutely no feeling about what she’s doing; she has no relationship with human life at all. It’s really about sustenance. It’s not because she’s looking to ruin a family or take someone’s son, it’s just a hunger she’s feeding.

On her character’s development: It’s very rare to come across an opportunity like this to play a character who goes through the kind of transformation that Laura does. The transition she makes is like that of a butterfly – she starts off as this kind of amoeba, part of a mass, and she’s cocooned. Then suddenly she transforms into this colourful creature, who is experiencing all these new and different things. It’s such a beautiful, poetic story, and it’s incredibly touching to me.

On the challenges of the role: I found it really challenging, because there’s no way to relate your own experiences, since they’re completely irrelevant. I had to wash myself of judgment, self-awareness, anticipation, doubt. All the things that make us human. It wasn’t until the character—an “it”—becomes a “she” that she starts to identify with everything and be bombarded. That’s when I was able to relate. Before then, it was totally abstract.

On the development of the script: Jonathan and I had been talking about this project for three years before shooting, and it went through many incarnations during that time. Originally, the script was kind of a two-hander; it was about a couple posing as man and wife. The community was more involved, so it was like a witch hunt, in a way.

On her attraction to the role: What originally drew me to the project, was this idea of putting on another skin and completely transforming into someone almost unrecognisable – but without being completely unrecognisable. I found that to be endlessly intriguing. And eventually this story evolved into what it is now, which is a story that really only follows one protagonist – it’s a ‘she’ but it’s really an ‘it’. Then there’s the transformation, as Jonathan would say, from an ‘it’ to a ‘she’, and that’s what I think the film, at its core, is really about.

On the hidden camera setups: I went into this project with absolutely no idea how we were going to shoot it or what it was going to be. It was weeks before I even knew what I was doing. Jonathan and I spent a lot of time talking about it, both of us saying, ‘I will not let you down – I will give you everything I have!’ I don’t think either of us knew quite what we were doing. But we started it, and it became clearer as we went along.

On the guerilla-style shoot: I can’t say I know what a normal film is. Nothing ever feels normal, even if you’re making some huge action film for a studio. But this one was certainly an experience I’d never really had before, partly because there was the covert side of it. When you’re working that way, you just have to be open to anything, and because of that you really do allow yourself to be vulnerable. Which is terrifying but it’s also very thrilling at the same time. I certainly discovered a lot about myself and my limits, what makes me self-conscious. I became incredibly self-conscious, because I was suddenly totally aware that I had this secret that nobody else knew about. But once you get over that, it’s beautiful, because things happen in an organic way that could never happen if they were scripted.

On filming undercover: The truth is, if people aren’t expecting you to be there, then you’re not really part of their reality. People in general are mostly going about their lives – they’re not looking for a hidden camera crew. We’re really in our own kind of world.

On filming undercover: I was nervous. More than anything it was the idea of having to abandon all your instincts and judgements and the characteristics that humanise us and find a place in my mind that was pure motivation and intention without any of the rest of the noise. And from that you have these revelations and moments of self-discovery that really were true discoveries and that’s terrifying because you can’t rely on the nuances and these tools that actors use and fall back on. You can’t have any of that so it was terrifying but also liberating and very exciting.

On the filming conditions: The weather is another character in the film, really. The film is not about a midsummer afternoon, it’s about a wild transformation, one that’s raging. There has to be that feeling of a looming end, an apocalyptic feeling, and the way it’s captured on film, I think the audience will be inclined to fall into it. There were definitely a few days in the forest when I think we all thought the world was coming to an end – in fact, it felt like it almost did when everybody abandoned the set. I always thought the forest was trying to vomit us out of it; that’s what it felt like, like it was trying to expel us from it.

On filming her first nude scenes: Anybody would be concerned about something like that. I mean, I’m not a nudist in my everyday life and it wasn’t a thrill for me to undress in front of the camera. But in some ways it was like therapy because I had to recognise the things I was feeling self-conscious about and then let go of them. I had to be able to have that discovery of my body and myself as the character and not be looking at my body and be comparing it to anything else or noticing the imperfections because there is no such thing for that character. And you know, hopefully people won’t think that the nudity is gratuitous – and I certainly don’t think it is – it’s biological and it works for the film. I think it has to have that because it’s an important part of the character’s discovery.

On seeing the film for the first time: It was very strange. It was the first time I had seen the film with an audience and the first time I saw the film finished. And I was on this huge mezzanine so I felt super-exposed. Then at the end, when the lights came up… there was this sound of people cheering and booing at the same time, but with equal gusto. I didn’t know how to react to it. I think I was just… I wouldn’t say disturbed but I was sort of shocked. I looked over at Jonathan and he was filled with glee. Absolutely thrilled. We left the theatre and I was like, ‘That was so strange,’ And Jonathan was like, ‘That was the best reaction! That was the most amazing sound I’ve ever heard in my life.

On working with Jonathan Glazer: It’s hard to describe what his method is exactly, but, to me, it seems he has a process of finding a scene. It may take him a period of time to find the rhythm of it, find the music in the scene, but once he does, he homes in on it, full steam ahead. He can see the shape of the scene as it is forming and he’s very specific but, oddly, at the same time quite unspecific. It’s a process of finding the material, and it was fascinating to discover the scenes with him. We had an incredibly close relationship – unusually supportive.

On working with Jonathan Glazer: He’s something else, definitely. Jonathan is—and there’s no bullshitting here—every actor’s dream. It was an unprecedented experience for me, working with somebody so insightful and curious. I don’t think I ever saw him on his phone once. I wouldn’t say he’s cool as a cucumber by any means, but there’s a lot of internal dialogue going on in there.

Quoting: Cast and Crew

Director Jonathan Glazer: I understand the need to cast somebody who means something in the marketplace – it’s the law of the jungle, isn’t it? But while you’re making a film, you don’t want to be aware of any of that. I certainly don’t want to make a film with half an eye on the box office. I’m not interested in that, I’m interested in fulfilling a journey, an idea, and it soon became clear that she was the best candidate for the role. She had a real appetite to do something risky, and she threw herself into it. This is not the Scarlett Johansson as you might see her in a glossy magazine – this is an actress who’s fully committed.

Producer James Wilson: I remember listening from the other van and the challenging thing for her was that she would have to start off each conversation with a simple request for directions. She would say, ‘I’m lost,’ or, ‘I need to find the post office.’ But then, for the purpose of the moment we were going for creatively and narratively, she had to bend the conversation towards the notion of a pick-up. We used to call it ‘The Tiger on the Prowl’. She’s hunting, and so she’s finding out if the person is a suitable victim. Are they alone? Will they be missed? So she would have to go from, ‘I need to find the post office,’ to, ‘Do you live alone?’ or ‘Are you busy right now?’ or ‘Are you going to work?’ It was a strange kind of verbal gymnastics.

Critical Response

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: Johansson strips everything away as well, including her clothing. But it is the emotional baring she does that is so riveting as her character goes from robotic to something closer to real. The actress is already building an eclectic body of work from the superhero of “Avengers” to the supercomputer voice of “Her.” In front of Glazer’s camera she is staggeringly, fearlessly uncomfortable in her own skin, the physicality of making her body seem like a foreign form is extraordinary.

Robbie Collin, The Telegraph: Johansson is nothing short of iconic here; her character is a classic femme fatale in the film noir tradition, down to the plump red lips and deep fur coat, but with a refrigerated nothingness at her core. She looks at her fellow cast members as if they are from another planet – which is, of course, exactly as it should be.

Anthony Lane, The New Yorker: What’s enduringly fascinating is the presence of Scarlett Johansson: The Other has become her go-to mode, whether here or in Her or in Luc Besson’s forthcoming science-fiction thriller Lucy. Her screen persona is a blend of the girl next door and “The Woman Next Door,” an unassuming ingénue who has learned of her powers of attraction but is still learning to use her powers of seduction, and so whose naïveté is increasingly becoming faux. That’s why she was just right for Lost in Translation, for Match Point, as Sondra Pransky in Scoop (“Stop telling people I sprang from your loins!”), and even—speaking of the anthropological cinema—in The Nanny Diaries, which is a much better movie than Under the Skin. Her distinctive ready-made character is awaiting further development; I wish she’d come back to Earth.

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: As the ultimate fembot-fatale, Johansson is deceptively good in a role that demands sparkly, seductive animation one moment and dispassionate blankness the next. Just what her character is doing, and how that will or will not change her, provides the bare bones of a narrative that, while thin, can still be exploited for maximum aesthetic and even intellectual impact.

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Johansson is phenomenal in every sense of the word. She joins Glazer in creating a brave experiment in cinema that richly rewards the demands it makes. The result is an amazement, a film of beauty and shocking gravity.

Eric Kohn, Indiewire: Though she retains an icy expression for much of the running time, Johansson implies a fascinating degree of calculation with the slightest robotic motions, particular in relation to occasional dialogue scenes in which she uses charm to attract her victims (the alien is a quick study). As the basic story provides a rumination on the performative nature of sexual attraction, Johansson takes the bait, throwing the full range of expressiveness and physical prowess into the role. There’s nothing remotely familiar about her appearance as she spends most of the movie hidden beneath a black mop and reigning in her typically energetic delivery. The actress has an appropriately exotic presence onscreen.

Chris Willman, The Playlist: Johannson turns out to be perfectly cast, being able to shift from blank alien mode to kittenish seduction without ever letting you see the switch being turned on or off.

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: There’s no plot, as such, only the woman’s dreamlike progression through dark landscapes seen in extreme long shots, and her presence in interiors that are often depicted, with Japanese spareness, in static wide shots. Much of this is fascinating, as far as it goes, but it wouldn’t go as far as it does into drama were it not for Ms. Johansson’s wonderfully strange performance. It’s not a movie-star turn. She’s there to serve the filmmaker’s purposes by being self-effacing, but—an extraordinary feat—she is mesmerizing at the same time. Her marvelous voice lends a light musicality to her spare lines. Trusting her material, she doesn’t try to be seductive; the affable questions her character asks of men she meets—what’s your name, where are you going—are more than enough to draw them into her orbit.

Awards and Nominations

Below is a list of all accolades Scarlett has received for her role in the film.

NOMINATED: British Independent Film Awards – Best Actress
NOMINATED: Chicago Film Critics Association – Best Actress
NOMINATED: Denver Film Critics Society – Best Actress
NOMINATED: Detroit Film Critics Society – Best Actress
NOMINATED: Dublin Film Critics’ Circle – Best Actress
NOMINATED: Gotham Independent Film Awards – Best Actress
NOMINATED: Indiewire Film Critics’ Poll – Best Lead Actress
NOMINATED: London Film Critics Circle Awards – Actress of the Year
NOMINATED: National Society of Film Critics – Best Actress
NOMINATED: San Francisco Film Critics Circle – Best Actress
NOMINATED: Village Voice Film Poll – Best Actress
NOMINATED: Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association – Best Actress