Scarlett Johansson opens up about the obstacles of being young actress in the early 2000s in a recent interview with CBS Sunday Morning’s Tracy Smith while promoting her new skin care line, The Outset. The two-time Oscar-nominated actress explained that “the spotlight” in the early 2000s was a “really harsh time” for women, as it was deemed “socially acceptable” to tear actresses down when they didn’t look a certain way. Johansson further described,
It was tough. There was a lot placed on how women looked and what was offered at that time for women my age, as far as like acting roles or opportunities, it was much slimmer than it is now. I think there’s much more empowering roles available to young actors now than when I was in my 20s.
Johansson’s breakout in Hollywood came in the form of two roles in the same year. First, playing a recent college graduate in a spiritless marriage opposite Bill Murray in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003) and Johannes Vermeer’s (Colin Firth) servant in Peter Webber’s historical drama Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003). She was nominated for Golden Globes for her performances in both films. From there, she spent the rest of the 2000s starring in films such as Woody Allen’s Match Point (2005), Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige (2006), and the romantic comedy He’s Just Not That Into You (2009). Johansson found choosing great roles for herself in the early 2000s was “slim pickings”, with the actress explaining further,
You would get really like pigeonholed and offered the same [roles]. It would be the ‘other woman’ or the ‘side piece’. It was kind of tricky to navigate around that because there was a lot more I wanted to do. I found that doing theatre in New York was a great way for me to work different muscles and kind of get out of that pattern.
Johansson has taken to the stage twice on Broadway, with the first being at the Cort Theatre in the 2010 production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, where she played Catherine, and the second in 2013, where she played Margaret in a production of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at Richard Rodgers Theatre. There she learned to find the “quiet moments” in her career and to take the time to search for the “right roles” rather than be “working constantly,” with the Black Widow actress stating,
Once you start working, you really feel like every job is going to be your last and that if you get opportunities to work, you have to keep taking them. Even though they might not be as varied as the jobs that really give you pleasure, that you can learn from and challenge yourself with. Every actor feels like that because it is so competitive, and I think once you do have the spotlight, you want to keep it on you. I mean, that’s the instinct I think for a young actor, or any actor. Then at some point I realized, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve got a foothold, and it’s OK. I can work on the things that challenge me, and stuff will come out when it comes out, and people won’t forget about the work I did before, but it took a while to get there.
Johansson seems to have no trouble finding the right roles for herself today, as she has three films yet to be released with confirmed roles. Her first, Ray Gunn, is an animated neo-noir sci-fi crime film that is set to release on Netflix sometime this year. Her other two projects include Paper Tiger, in which she stars opposite Adam Driver once again, and Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of The Exorcist, which is currently filming.
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