Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett Johansson (born November 22, 1984) is an American actress and singer. Her films as a leading actress have grossed over $15.4 billion worldwide, making her the highest-grossing lead actor in history. She has received a British Academy Film Award and a Tony Award, along with nominations for two Academy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards.
Scarlett Johansson began her career as a child actress on stage in an off-Broadway play. She made her film debut in the fantasy comedy North (1994) and gained early recognition for roles in Manny & Lo (1996), The Horse Whisperer (1998), and Ghost World (2001). She transitioned to adult roles with Lost in Translation (2003), winning the BAFTA Award for Best Actress. She earned further acclaim for Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003), A Love Song for Bobby Long (2004), and Match Point (2005), the latter marking her first collaboration with Woody Allen, who later directed her in Scoop (2006) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008). During this period, she also appeared in The Prestige (2006) and released the albums Anywhere I Lay My Head (2008) and Break Up (2009), both charting on the Billboard 200.
Scarlett Johansson debuted on Broadway in 2010 in a revival of A View from the Bridge, winning the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. She began portraying Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Iron Man 2, reprising the role in eight films, culminating in her solo feature Black Widow (2021), which brought her global stardom. During this period, she also starred in the science fiction films Her (2013), Under the Skin (2013), and Lucy (2014).
simultaneous Academy Award nominations—Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress—for the respective roles of an actress going through a divorce in the drama Marriage Story (2019) and a single mother in Nazi Germany in the satire Jojo Rabbit (2019), becoming one of the few actors to achieve this feat.
Scarlett Johansson The world’s highest-paid actress in 2018 and 2019, Johansson has been featured multiple times on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list. Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2021 and 2025. Labeled a sex symbol, Johansson has been referred to as one of the world’s most attractive women by various media outlets. She is a prominent brand endorser and supports several charitable causes. Divorced from actor Ryan Reynolds and businessman Romain Dauriac, Johansson has been married to comedian Colin Jost since 2020. She has two children, one with Dauriac and another with Jost.
Early life
Scarlett Johansson Scarlett Ingrid Johansson was born on November 22, 1984, in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Johansson’s father, Karsten Olaf Johansson, is an architect originally from Copenhagen, Denmark. Through him, she is a granddaughter of Ejner Johansson, an art historian, screenwriter and film director, whose own father was Swedish.Her mother, New Yorker Melanie Sloan, has worked as a producer. She comes from a Jewish family who fled Poland and Russia, originally surnamed Schlamberg; Johansson has referred to herself as Jewish.She has an older sister named Vanessa,
who is also an actress, an older brother named Adrian, and a twin brother named Hunter.Johansson also has an older half-brother named Christian from her father’s first marriage. She holds dual American and Danish citizenship. On a 2017 episode of PBS’s Finding Your Roots, she discovered that her maternal great-grandfather’s brother and extended family died in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust.
Scarlett Johansson Johansson attended PS 41, an elementary school in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. Her parents divorced when she was thirteen. She was particularly close to her maternal grandmother, Dorothy Sloan, a bookkeeper and schoolteacher. They often spent time together and Johansson considered Dorothy her best friend. Interested in a career in the spotlight from an early age, Johansson often put on song-and-dance routines for her family. She was particularly fond of musical theater and jazz hands. Johansson took lessons in tap dance, and states that her parents were supportive of her career choice. She has described her childhood as very ordinary.
Scarlett Johansson practiced acting as a child, inspired by Judy Garland. She enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and auditioned for commercials, later shifting her focus to film and theater, making her first stage appearance in the off-Broadway play Sophistry with Ethan Hawke. She also studied at the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan.
Acting career
Scarlett Johansson At age nine, Johansson landed her first paid role as a sketch character on an episode of Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Later that year, she made her film debut as John Ritter’s daughter in the fantasy comedy North (1994). She says that when she was on the film set, she knew intuitively what to do. She later played minor roles such as the daughter of Sean Connery’s and Kate Capshaw’s characters in the mystery thriller Just Cause (1995), and an art student in If Lucy Fell (1996).Johansson’s first
Scarlett Johansson’s leading role was as Amanda, the younger sister of a pregnant teenager who runs away from her foster home in Manny & Lo (1996) alongside Aleksa Palladino and her brother, Hunter. Her performance received positive reviews: one critic noted, “[the film] grows on you, largely because of the charm of … Scarlett Johansson,” while another commented on her “peaceful aura” and believed, “If she can get through puberty with that aura undisturbed, she could become an important actress.” Johansson earned a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Lead Female for the role.
Scarlett Johansson, after appearing in minor roles in Fall and Home Alone 3 (both in 1997), gained wider attention for her performance in The Horse Whisperer (1998), co-starring director Robert Redford. The drama tells the story of a talented horse trainer hired to help an injured teenager (Johansson) and her horse recover. Johansson received an “introducing” credit on this film; it was her seventh role. Redford described her as “13 going on 30.” Critics praised her performance, noting she convincingly conveyed the awkwardness of her age and the inner pain of a carefree girl suddenly faced with tragedy. For this film, she was nominated for the Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Most Promising Actress. Johansson later reflected that the role helped her realize acting is about manipulating one’s emotions, though she found it challenging to find good teenage roles, as scripts often lacked depth for young characters.
Music career
Scarlett Johansson, in 2006, sang the track “Summertime” for Unexpected Dreams – Songs from the Stars, a non-profit collection of songs recorded by Hollywood actors. In April 2007, she performed with the Jesus and Mary Chain during their Coachella reunion show in Indio, California. The following year, Johansson appeared as the leading lady in Justin Timberlake’s music video for “What Goes Around… Comes Around,” which was nominated for an MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year.
In May 2008, Scarlett Johansson released her debut album Anywhere I Lay My Head, featuring one original song and ten cover versions of Tom Waits songs, with contributions from David Bowie and members of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Celebration. Reviews of the album were mixed, with some critics praising it as “surprisingly alluring” and “a brilliant album” with “ghostly magic,” while others were less impressed. The album peaked at number 126 on the Billboard 200. Johansson began listening to Waits at around age 11 or 12 and said of him, “His melodies are so beautiful, his voice is so distinct and I had my own way of doing Tom Waits songs.”
In September 2009, Scarlett Johansson and singer-songwriter Pete Yorn released a collaborative album, Break Up, inspired by Serge Gainsbourg’s duets with Brigitte Bardot. The album reached number 41 in the US. In 2010, Steel Train released Terrible Thrills Vol. 1, featuring female artists covering songs from their self-titled album, with Johansson performing “Bullet.” She also sang “One Whole Hour” for the 2011 documentary Wretches & Jabberers and contributed vocals to J. Ralph’s “Before My Time” for the 2012 climate documentary Chasing Ice, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song.
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Public image
Some media and fans call Scarlett Johansson “ScarJo,” a nickname she finds lazy and insulting. She does not have social media profiles and prefers not to share details of her everyday life. Johansson has frequently ranked highly in beauty listings, appearing on Maxim’s Hot 100 from 2006 to 2014, being named “Sexiest Woman Alive” twice by Esquire, and included in rankings by Playboy, Men’s Health, and FHM. She was also named GQ’s Babe of the Year in 2010. In 2022, Johansson co-founded the plant-based skincare line, The Outset, with Kate Foster.
Scarlett Johansson was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in June 2004. She appeared on Forbes’ Celebrity 100 list in 2006, 2014, 2015, 2018, and 2019, and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in May 2012. Johansson was included on Time’s 100 most influential people list in 2021 and 2025. She ranked among Forbes’ highest-paid actresses from 2014 to 2016 and topped the list in 2018 and 2019. In 2016, she was the highest-grossing actor of the year. As of October 2025, her films have grossed over $5.6 billion in North America and $15.4 billion worldwide, making her the highest-grossing leading actor at the box office. A wax statue of her was unveiled at Madame Tussauds New York in 2015.
