W MAGAZINE – Scarlett Johansson’s 30-year career is a testament to the fact that she has the range. But recent years have brought plenty of criticism that the 36-year-old can go too far—though, as Johansson again made clear in a new interview with the Gentlewoman, she has no regrets. It all started with Ghost in the Shell, a 2017 manga series that arguably should have starred a Japanese actor. (Johansson defended her decision, asserting she “would never want to feel like [she] was playing a character that was offensive.”) The outcry over Johansson’s next role, as a transgender massage parlor owner, was even more extreme, to the point that Johansson eventually stepped away from the film—but not before defending herself first.

“You know, as an actor I should be allowed to play any person, or any tree, or any animal because that is my job and the requirements of my job,” she infamously told the magazine As If. And, unlike stars such as Timothée Chalamet and Kate Winslet, she’s staunchly stood by Woody Allen. “I love Woody. I believe him, and I would work with him anytime,” she told the Hollywood Reporter in 2019, referring to the well-documented allegations of his sexual misconduct. “It’s hard because it’s a time where people are very fired up, and understandably.”

At this point, one has to wonder if Johansson is actually drawn to controversy. And according to her interview with the Gentlewoman, the answer is yes. “Yeah, I’ve made a career out of it,” she said. “I’m going to have opinions about things, because that’s just who I am.” At the same time, she continued, “I mean, everyone has a hard time admitting when they’re wrong about stuff, and for all of that to come out publicly, it can be embarrassing. To have the experience of, Wow, I was really off mark there, or I wasn’t looking at the big picture, or I was inconsiderate. I’m also a person.”

“I can be reactive,” Johansson continued. “I can be impatient. That doesn’t mix that great with self-awareness.” Hence why she’s been trying to learn how to recognize “when it’s not your turn to speak.”

Still, Johansson doesn’t really sweat it. “I don’t think actors have obligations to have a public role in society,” she said. “Some people want to, but the idea that you’re obligated to because you’re in the public eye is unfair. You didn’t choose to be a politician, you’re an actor. Your job is to reflect our experience to ourselves; your job is to be a mirror for an audience, to be able to have an empathetic experience through art.” Her goal is for the audience to “see pieces of themselves, or are able to connect with themselves through this experience of watching this performance or story or interaction between actors or whatever it is.” And “that,” she asserted, is her job. “The other stuff is not.”

Scarlett will grace the Spring/Summer 2021 Issue of The Gentlewoman Magazine, available on March 25th. Click here to pre-order a copy!

Back in the leather catsuit for the eighth time in May, Black Widow, Scarlett Johansson’s sassy Marvel character, has her own film at last. Over 30 years in show business, the 36-year-old actor has soared steadily from indie darling to box office draw, and she now has the powers to cast a woman in the director’s chair. It’s Scarlett’s fanatical commitment to outlandish parts that keeps fans coming back for more. And with her own production company, she’s free to make work as rich and as challenging as she is herself.

Hanging behind Scarlett Johansson, who’s at home in New York, is a painting by the artist Lois Dodd, once described as the most famous painter of windows in America. It’s a huge canvas, dominated by a deep purple dusk and a large clapboard house, one celebrated window lit up yellow, looming above Scarlett’s head like an idea. “I was thinking maybe I could frame it so it looks like I’m in the painting,” she says. It’s one of those mid-Zoom thoughts you have as you see yourself, yet again, pinned in the corner of a screen.

Over the past year and its many Zooms, with the surplus of events on one hand and the lack of happening on the other, Scarlett has learned a few things about herself. “Well, I’ve never spent this much time off. Ever. In my entire life.” She widens her eyes behind thick black-framed glasses. “I’ve been working for almost 30 years!”

She’s 36.
“It’s crazy,” she says. “It’s insane. I have a really long white beard that I shaved off just before this.”
You could retire, I suggest.
“It’s not even early retirement,” she says, a little rueful.

From child acting – off-Broadway as a kid, Manny & Lo at 12, The Horse Whisperer at 14 – her career has grown exponentially and irrepressibly, indie to Marvel. She’s not the kind of actor who, having hit the superhero jackpot, slides lazily into a plateau, making one film a year playing an approximation of herself. Instead, she’s somehow retained the status of a character actor with blockbuster effect. Or, as Sofia Coppola, who directed her in Lost in Translation, the film that catapulted her career into the big leagues back in 2003, put it over email, “She’s proven that she can be a bombshell and also a respected actress with depth and strength.”

Over her years enmeshed in the Marvel universe, Scarlett has revealed a mastery of hand-to-hand stunt combat, but she’s also given her character, Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, mystery and humour. “What’s really great about her as an actor is she can’t do fake,” says Cate Shortland, the director of Black Widow, Scarlett’s first stand-alone Marvel film, due to be released in May. “There’s no BS; she has to believe it.” Rachel Weisz, her co-star, agrees. “She is extremely talented and hard-working and passionate about her role. She’s a straight shooter, very focused and clear about the story she is telling.”

Read the full article at The Gentlewoman website.