It's hard to imagine Scarlett Johansson being anything other than the star she is today.
However, her childhood in New York City was a lot more gritty than many fans realize.
Plus, her personal life hasn't exactly been smooth!
This is the stunning transformation of Scarlett Johansson.
Scarlett Johansson was born in New York City on November 22, 1984.
Her twin brother, Hunter Johansson, was born just three minutes later.
Together, Scarlett and Hunter were the youngest of four siblings.
Johansson spoke to Interview magazine about her experience of growing up in Greenwich
Village in Manhattan.
Apparently, her family lived in a housing development.
She first went to a public school and then one for the performing arts.
But back then, Johansson said public school was much more diverse.
Johansson explained to Interview,
"A lot of the artists in the neighborhood had kids who went there."
In an episode of Inside the Actors Studio, Johansson opened up about her family's low
income, revealing.
"We were living on welfare, we were on food stamps."
She added that her mother tried to shield her kids from the difficult experience.
By all accounts, Scarlett Johansson showed signs of being destined for the acting world
from a very early age.
As the actress explained in an interview with The Guardian,
"[I was always] a big ham, it's like I hopped out of the womb and said, 'I will perform!'"
Additionally, Johansson once had a tantrum in a talent agent's office when she was 7
years old because they weren't interested in her.
Johannson recalled the experience, telling The Guardian,
"I was, like, devastated.
I decided at that very moment that my whole life was going down the tubes."
It's clear that the young Johansson was doggedly determined and wholly passionate.
Soon, Johansson's mother found her daughter an agent, and the young Scarlett began auditioning
for commercials.
Johansson told The Guardian,
"It was like being in a beauty pageant.
The other moms were really scary, and it was awful, a really sordid scene."
She added that she and her mother had dramatic fights because of the tension.
Eventually, Johansson stopped auditioning for commercials, and only went up for film
auditions — and soon enough, she'd won her first role.
Scarlett Johansson has sometimes been described as a method actor, a technique that's often
associated with actors going way too far and becoming dangerously immersed in their roles.
And while Johansson did spend some time training as a method actor at The Lee Strasberg Theater
& Film Institute, that's not how she became the talent that she is today.
Johansson's acting training started pretty early on in her life, when she was just 7
years old.
As she explained to Elle, Johansson mostly relied on her own instincts as opposed to
adhering to a specific type of training.
Johansson revealed to the magazine,
"I learned early on how to manipulate my emotions.
As far back as I can remember, I've been hyperaware of human behavior and able to mimic it somehow."
It sounds like Johansson learned how to act on the job by trusting her gut, rather than
training in the infamous "method" technique.
As Scarlett Johansson explained to Interview, her early movie roles were pretty life-changing.
She was just 8 years old when she appeared in her first feature film, North, in 1994.
Apparently, the experience opened her eyes to the fact that she could actually make a
career out of acting.
However, it wasn't until four years later, when she was 12, that Johansson really hit
her stride with acting.
Johannson told Interview,
"I'd made probably five or six movies at that point — I was doing a lot of really emotional
work — but I remember finding that place of realizing, 'Oh, wait, I can manipulate
this thing that I'm doing.'"
Johansson's performance in North got the industry's attention.
As she told The Guardian, she "got a whole slew of scripts" about young girls in emotionally
complex scenarios.
From that point on, it was pretty clear that Johansson was more than a bright and happy
child actor destined for Hallmark holiday movies and rom-coms.
Scarlett Johansson is known for being a somewhat mysterious, alluring actress — that's thanks
to her signature deep, raspy voice and her penchant for complex, dark roles.
It turns out, Johansson started to build a reputation for her maturity from an incredibly
early age.
As Elle pointed out, her famous "old soul" has been written about extensively.
After appearing in The Horse Whisperer at the age of 12, Johansson was praised by the
film's co-screenwriter Richard LaGravanese, who told The Hollywood Reporter,
"[Scarlett Johannson] brought a heartache to the part that seemed to come from experience
beyond her years."
As legend has it, famed director and actor Robert Redford once said that Johansson was,
quote, "13 going on 30."
Later, when Johansson was in her late teens, the director of Lost in Translation, Sofia
Coppola, said to The Guardian,
"She makes you feel like she has been around the world.
She has a coolness and a subtlety that you would not expect.
You feel like she's seen a lot."
For Johansson, this reputation won her a series of complex, mature roles that defined her
early career.
After her super busy childhood acting career, Scarlett Johansson graduated to a more "adult"
role in the 2003 film Lost in Translation.
She spoke to Vogue about the life-changing effect the film had on her.
As the publication explained, it had been a wild year for the young star, who was suddenly
"everywhere."
She confessed that the media attention after this film was "hard to navigate."
Johansson also spoke on The Howard Stern Show about the experience, telling the radio host
that shooting the film was "hard" for her.
Johansson also confessed,
"I felt sort of out of the loop — I was 17 years old when I made that movie."
Johansson added that she and her co-star Bill Murray had very different energies on set,
but when the cameras started rolling, everything clicked.
Based on the hugely positive response to the film and the spike in industry interest in
Johansson, it's safe to say that Johansson shone in Lost in Translation — even if she
felt a little out of her depth at the time.
In 2008, Scarlett Johansson got married to fellow actor Ryan Reynolds.
As she told Vogue,
"[Ryan and I] always kept our story private."
Sadly, the relationship didn't last, and the couple split in 2010.
As Johansson explained to German magazine Gala, the divorce was initially depressing.
However, with the help of her friends, her brother, and her grandmother, Johansson found
the support she needed.
She also explained that she wanted to keep the reasons for the split private, but did
concede,
"I can be overcritical — with myself and with other people."
Later, in 2014, Johansson explained to Glamour that she had indeed learned a lot from the
relationship, revealing,
"I think I know myself better.
I feel I know now more of what I need in a relationship, what I want in a relationship."
She added that her time with Reynolds had given her, quote, "more tools to communicate."
One of Scarlett Johansson's most defining roles was in the indie sci-fi film Under the
Skin, directed by Jonathan Glazer.
The film was shot in 2011 in Scotland, and famously used real people from the streets
rather than actors.
Additionally, as things clicked into place on set, the shoot became an unforgettable
experience for Johansson.
She told The Guardian in 2014 that she ended up collaborating with Glazer for three years,
becoming intricately involved in the creative process, and giving suggestions about plot
and dialogue.
The film was also an odd experience for Johansson, who ended up improvising most of her lines.
Johannson told The Denver Post,
"It took me several weeks of shooting to figure out what I was playing."
In the end, the character ended up teaching Johansson a lot about her nature, and caused
her to ask herself a lot of questions.
Johannson explained,
"I think when you get older you start to get curious about yourself in a different way,
not just how can I get what I want."
The 2017 #MeToo movement kicked into high gear when a series of actresses called out
the misogyny and sexual harassment they'd experienced in Hollywood.
And while Scarlett Johansson began acting well before the movement took off, she's never
been afraid to speak up for women.
Back in 2008, Johansson discussed the difficulty of aging as an actress.
Then in 2014, she claimed that the nickname "ScarJo" was, quote, "lazy and flippant,"
saying,
"There's something kind of violent about it."
"I don't think anyone in my actual life calls me that."
She has a point — her male co-stars don't get these names!
Additionally, in 2019 the star revealed during a roundtable for The Hollywood Reporter that
she'd never identified with the public's image of her.
Johannson told the outlet,
"When I was working in my early 20s and even my late teens, I felt that I sort of got somehow
typecast as hypersexualized.
I guess at the time [it] seemed OK to everyone — it was another time — even though it
wasn't part of my own narrative."
In 2014, Scarlett Johansson announced that she was expecting a child with her then-fiancé,
Romain Dauriac.
Later that year, she gave birth to her daughter, Rose Dauriac.
However her relationship didn't last, as she and Dauriac split up in 2016.
Unsurprisingly, motherhood has been completely life-changing for Johansson.
As she explained to The Daily Telegraph in 2015,
"I think having any kind of huge, life-changing event happen to you, such as having children…
is very, very inspiring."
Becoming a single mother also inspired Johansson's work in films such as Marriage Story and Jojo
Rabbit.
Johannson confessed to USA Today,
"[With single parenthood] there can be a loneliness and this constant feeling of doubt, that you
don't know what the hell you're doing and you don't have anyone else to bounce it off
of."
Still, all difficulties aside, having her daughter has brought Johansson a great deal
of joy.
In speaking about her daughter, Johannson added,
"When I look at her, I feel full of hope and positivity."
When many people think of Scarlett Johansson, they inevitably think of her as the Black
Widow in Marvel's long-running Avengers franchise.
She first appeared in the wildly popular films in 2010 when the character was introduced
in Iron Man 2.
After appearing in several MCU films as the Black Widow, her character got her own film
due for release in July 2021.
In 2019, Johansson called the experience, quote, "life-changing" at the Avengers: Endgame
premiere.
The actress told the crowd,
"It's been such a pleasure to come to work everyday.
I feel incredibly fortunate to be with such a beautiful cast of creative people, open-minded
people, and it's been an incredible journey."
Additionally, in 2016, Johansson spoke to Michigan Avenue, and revealed that the Black
Widow was actually her favorite role to date:
"It's been an interesting journey, to take a character and grow it over these years,
and peel the layers back and be able to, as you do in life, grow with this person."
In 2019, Scarlett Johansson announced that she was engaged to SNL actor Colin Jost.
The pair originally met back in 2010, way back when Johansson was still married to Ryan
Reynolds.
However, it wasn't until 2017 that the couple made their relationship more romantic.
They were spotted on a date a few months after Johansson's second divorce.
By the looks of things, the couple couldn't be happier.
When Johansson hosted SNL in December 2019, she gushed,
"This place means so much to me.
I have so many friends here and I met the love of my life here."
And it seems that Jost is equally head over heels.
In his book A Very Punchable Face: A Memoir, the actor said that from their very first
meeting, he saw she had, quote, "a grace and a smile" that he had never seen in anyone
else.
In 2020, Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost tied the knot in an intimate ceremony.
By the looks of it, the couple seems very happy together.
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