Scarlett Johansson's journey from indie starlet to Hollywood superstar began with some rough
times growing up in New York City.
Let's take a closer look at what the Avengers star's life was like before all the fame.
Growing up in New York
Johansson's father is from Denmark, but she's 100 percent a Manhattan girl.
She remembers her time growing up in NYC fondly despite it being a lot more difficult than
her life is today.
She attended elementary school at P.S. 41 on 11th Street in Greenwich Village, a school
that's now in a high-demand area but wasn't as trendy back then.
She lived in a middle-income housing development in the West Village that's since become filled
with condos.
At the start of eighth grade, Johansson joined what she's described as the, quote, "pot-smoking,
Beatles-listening" student body at the Professional Children's School, a college prep institution
designed for kids working as performers in and around New York.
While she graduated, it wasn't exactly with flying colors.
She's admitted to struggling a little academically, particularly with her SATs.
She got a 1080 out of a possible 1600, which according to her was partly because she didn't
answer half of the math questions.
"So you guys are gonna steal the SAT answers?
Well, you should."
Living on welfare
Johansson reportedly has a net worth in the region of $100 million, but back when she
was a kid, there wasn't much money to spare in her household.
"I've got sixty-seven dollars and eight cents."
"That'll get you to New York, where are you going to go after that?"
"Someplace where I don't have to go to moron school."
The family of six relied on help from the government to get by, including welfare and
food stamps, which was hard to take for her mother Melanie and her father Karsten.
Sadly, their relationship cracked under the pressure and they went their separate ways.
Melanie headed west to California, while Scarlett, who was 13 years old at the time, and her
twin brother Hunter stayed in New York with their dad.
Johansson has said she's never harbored any ill will toward her mother for leaving.
In an interview on Inside the Actors Studio, she explained,
"My mom tried to be as much as a buffer as possible with that experience.
By the time my twin brother and I came around, I think my parents' marriage, it had a lot
of strain."
Film freak mom
Johansson's mom is apparently a huge movie buff, and her passion for cinema began to
rub off on her daughter at a very young age.
As she put it when Darren Aronofsky interviewed her for Interview Magazine,
"My mom showed me a lot of movies when I was a kid—all of the movies that she loved.
She loved musicals.
She loved all those Elia Kazan movies.
And then her passion really lies in those political thrillers from the ’70s and those
[John] Cassavetes movies.
She’s still an avid film consumer—she sees everything.
But she’s a baby boomer, so the ’70s is her period.
I’ve got to say, there’s nothing quite like watching Network as a 9-year-old."
"Get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out and yell and say it, 'I'm
as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take this anymore!"
Melanie's eclectic cinematic taste was clearly a big influence on her daughter, evidenced
by how she's equally comfortable fronting a high concept indie like Under the Skin or
a silly comedy like Rough Night or a tentpole blockbuster like all the Marvel movies.
Since her mother is still such a passionate movie buff, we can only assume that she's
one of the main reasons why her movies are some of the highest-grossing around.
BFFs with grandma
Johansson was very close while growing up with her maternal grandmother, a Brooklyn-born
bookkeeper and schoolteacher named Dorothy Sloan.
In a 2006 interview with the Forward, Sloan revealed that she and little Scarlett were
the best of friends during her childhood years.
They would spend a lot of time together, and as Sloan tells it,
"People would ask her, 'Who's your best friend?'
And she would say, 'Grandma!'"
Her grandmother is clearly still important to Johansson.
She even gave her daughter Rose the middle name Dorothy.
The intergenerational love is mutual, as Sloan can't tell you enough about just how happy
she is for Johansson now that she's all grown up and conquering Hollywood.
Even today the doting grandma still gets surprised by Johansson's many talents, including her
musical pursuits.
She told the Forward,
"I heard a rendition of Scarlett Johansson singing the most sexy, the sultriest version
of 'Summertime' you ever heard.
I never knew she could sing!"
The pangs of puberty
Johansson might've surprised Grandma Dorothy with her sultry rendition of "Summertime,"
but it was no fluke, as the actress began working on her singing voice from a very young
age.
As she explained in Interview Magazine,
"I was a big song-and-dance type of kid.
You know, one of those kids with jazz hands.
I liked to improvise and do weird vocal exercises.
I was a major ham, if you can believe it … And then puberty hit and I crawled into a dark,
cold shell and never left."
Part of the problem might've been that she was in the public eye starting at such a young
age, but her acting career may've also ultimately have been her savior.
In a review of the 1996 indie Manny & Lo, which came out when Johansson was 11, the
San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle noted that she emitted a, quote, "peaceful aura."
He opined,
"If she can get through puberty with that aura undisturbed, she could become an important
actress."
LaSalle's prediction proved wise and prescient.
Johansson did struggle to cope with puberty at first, but she managed to crawl back out
of that dark place with the help of performance arts, as she got into acting and singing and
dancing during those years.
A crushing rejection
While Johansson started auditioning for roles at a young age, she had to go through a lot
of rejection before someone took a chance on her.
To this day, she still remembers the pain of being turned down by an agent for the very
first time.
As she put it in Interview Magazine,
"There was someone in my older brother's class who was doing some commercials and theater,
so my mom took me to that kid's agent because I loved musicals.
They didn't want me, though.
I was devastated.
I thought it was the end of my career."
The aspiring star was so upset after leaving that agent's office that her mother tried
to convince her to let go of her acting dreams, but the idea of giving up proved even more
painful.
Her mom could tell that she was devastated, but when Johansson said that she still really
wanted to keep at it, her mom supported her.
Too deep for Jell-O
With her mother's backing, Johansson eventually landed an agent and began trying out for parts
in commercials.
The trouble was, she had already developed the husky voice that helped make her famous
later in life.
Despite securing the first job she ever went for, which was a KitchenAid ad, she soon found
out that she didn't fit the bill when it came to most commercials.
As she described the situation to Interview magazine,
"At the age of 9, I sounded like a whiskey-drinking, chain-smoking fool.
Wasn't going to sell Jell-O with that voice, you know?"
Johansson's appearance was often exactly what casting directors were looking for, but as
soon she opened her mouth, the magic was lost.
As she told W magazine,
"I was this blonde, you know, kind of small enthusiastic kid, and then I'd open up my
mouth and people would go, 'Oh, do you have a cold?'
I was terrible at selling things.
I was really bad at improvising."
Over the course of her career, Johansson developed a fear of improvising that she still struggles
with today.
She's not quite sure why she's afraid, but she's admitted that she thinks it has something
to do with a lack of control.
"And she's leaving, and you're both trying not to laugh."
[to] "But Olive Garden customers would."
Lying to get a gig
Johansson made her film debut in the 1994 comedy North as the daughter of John Ritter's
character.
"Yeah, now I have two big brothers to look out for me."
"Okay, I know we're all excited to have North as part of our family, but he hasn't decided
if he wants to stay with us yet."
Her next on-screen dad was Sean Connery in 1995's Just Cause, a poorly received legal
thriller in which the former James Bond portrayed a Harvard law professor.
"Listen.
I've been thinking about you all day, Sweetheart, and I love you very much."
"I love you too, Daddy."
In 1996, she played Manny in the indie comedy Manny & Lo, and in 1997, she popped up in
Home Alone 3, a forgettable sequel that nobody asked for.
Her first big opportunity to really impress Tinseltown came the following year in Robert
Redford's The Horse Whisperer, but she had to lie to get the part.
"What are you gonna do?
I mean, you have to go to school."
"I said no!
I don't want to go back.
That's it.
I want to go home."
When Redford asked the then 13-year-old actress if she'd been on a horse before, she said
yes, twisting the truth to include the plastic one she had as a child.
But she later revealed the truth to Entertainment Tonight.
"I had no horse training whatsoever.
I didn't know what I was doing, and I was very unsure of myself, but I'm a lot more
confident now."
Despite the dishonesty, it all worked out in the end.
"First couple of weeks I was in pain of course, but other than that I never really had any
doubts, and I haven't fallen off yet!"
The movie was shot on location in Montana, and Johansson clearly fell in love with the
state's vast beauty, as she married her first husband, French journalist Romain Dauriac
in Big Sky country.
Crushing on Jared Leto
Romain Dauriac broke his silence over his 2017 separation from Johansson in a statement
that suggested he was tired of living in her shadow.
According to reports, he got sick of babysitting their daughter on film sets, but that's not
something the actress wanted to give up, as she believes it's important for Rose to see
her work.
Of course, this wasn't Johansson's first divorce.
Her marriage to Ryan Reynolds only lasted a couple of years, ending in 2011.
She's also been romantically involved with Josh Hartnett and Sean Penn, despite the latter
actor being twice her age.
But when it comes to her first Hollywood crush, that honor belongs to Jared Leto.
During her press tour for The Horse Whisperer, Johansson was asked if she had a crush on
Leonardo DiCaprio like every other 13-year-old girl at the time.
But she revealed instead that she was way more into Leto after seeing him in the short-lived
but beloved TV show My So-Called Life.
In 2004, she even reportedly hooked up with Leto, but just like the several relationships
that followed it, it wasn't meant to be.
Perhaps Johansson will have better luck with her current boyfriend, SNL's Colin Jost, whom
she's been dating since 2017 and got engaged to in 2019.
Politically active childhood
Some celebrities become socially and politically active after finding fame and fortune, but
Scarlett Johansson has been woke way before she ever walked a red carpet.
When she spoke at the 2017 amfAR New York Gala, she told attendees that her mother made
sure that she and her siblings were switched on to what was happening in the world around
them, and that she's always been grateful for that.
So grateful, in fact that she brought her mom as her date to the event, where she declared,
"I really couldn't think of anybody else that I'd rather [have] with me here tonight.
[She's] been incredibly inspiring for me in many, many ways, but certainly as a young
girl.
She never shielded us from what was going on in the zeitgeist in culture.
She always made us aware, you know, socially aware.
She always encouraged us to be politically and socially active."
Fame put Johansson in a position to do good on a larger scale, and she's certainly trying
to do her part.
She's been involved with as many as 29 different charities and foundations in one way or another.
As for political activism, she made a mark for her impassioned speeches at the Women's
March, which she attended as a guest in both 2017 and 2018.
She made headlines at the 2018 march after calling out James Franco over his alleged
sexual misconduct in the workplace.
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