Interview by Fred Topel

Though it’s difficult to juxtapose these two thoughts, Scarlett Johansson, at 25, has a length of road behind her that would rival the career retrospective of a middle-aged Hollywood celebrity. Though she made her first major cinematic appearance in Robert Redford’s 1998 film The Horse Whisperer, the truth is that her career began a full four years earlier in the movie North, when she was all of nine years old. Born in New York City to a family in the business (her paternal grandfather, Ejner Johansson, was a screenwriter and director; Melanie Sloan, her mom, is a producer), that remarkably early appearance in front of the lens becomes not as surprising as it might sound initially.

An ocean of film roles, relationship tumult, worshipful approbation, and celebrity gossip has ensued since, though her cinematic characterizations (35 in 16 years!) tended not to wander far from the perimeter of a thoughtfully-befuddled ingénue. From Lost in Translation (2003) to In Good Company (2004) to Vicki Christina Barcelona (2008) to He’s Just Not That Into You (2009), her outlines varied, but the core remained that of a young woman slightly lost. She has often chafed at that brand of typecasting and has expressed (including within the pages of this magazine) a need to escape from it.

Put bluntly, it was time to kick a little ass.

That opportunity came when she was offered the role of Natalie Rushman in this year’s Iron Man 2, alongside Gwyneth Paltrow and Robert Downey Jr. With a character morphing from retiringly-enigmatic secretary to deadly martial arts expert and secret agent, it was a turn tailor-made to switch her celluloid personality from doe to dynamite in one go. In part because of the wild success of that film ($130 million box office gross as of press time, though with an estimated budget of over $200 million), she is slated to appear next year as the same secret agent (only named Natasha Romanoff: aka “Black Widow”) in director Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, so we can confidently expect even more writhing, broken bodies in her wake.

Johansson has been married for two years to actor Ryan Reynolds, and currently divides her time between New York and Los Angeles. She spoke to our intrepid celebrity reporter about May romance, finding meaning in a two-dimensional profession, and how she and Gwyneth Paltrow plan to save the world.

Fred Topel for Industry: Sometimes its hard for film icons to work together on the same set, but—at least fictionally in Iron Man 2—Tony Stark is surprised to find that you and Pepper Potts [Paltrow] work beautifully as a duo. So, who do you think would work better to save the world, Tony and Rhodey [Don Cheadle] or you two?

Scarlett Johansson: [Laughs] We’d just stack them [the robots they fight]. I don’t know; I think that with the brains and the muscle and the beauty and the blonde, I feel like Gwyneth and I have maybe a greater chance…but you guys can fight for yourselves. I don’t know. I feel like if I could wield the guns and like the karate-chop movements, and Gwyneth could be the brains behind the operation. That’s our superpower. “I will out-think you!”

Industry: So it’s that scarce breed on display in you both: strong intelligent women, not just sex symbols?

SJ: Well, I’ve never really seen a kind of film of this genre before, where the female characters’ sex appeal sort of comes second. Of course, they’re sexy characters; when you have a sexy secretary or a girl swinging around by her ankles in a cat suit, that’s innately sexy. But the fact is these characters are intelligent, ambitious, motivated, and calculating to some degree. The norm would probably to just be a pawn in a story with a whole bunch of men kind of fighting it out and rolling around and getting down and dirty…and the woman is just a vision in a tight cat suit, but how boring! Jon [Favreau, director] made that really clear in the beginning that as far as Natalie was concerned, I was mysterious and nuanced and something to peel back the layers of…that there was something there. That’s why this film is so much more dynamic for me as an audience member. I’ve never been a huge fan of this genre really, because it was always sort of one note…explosive. Because Gwyneth and I are able to be the brains behind the operation in some aspect, there’s kind of a happy medium there. It adds to the charm…to the charisma of the product. It’s awfully old fashioned actually, in the best sense of the word. These characters are like those femme fatales of the golden age of Hollywood…more Bette Davis than the Jayne Mansfield.

Industry: Last year's He’s Just Not That Into You had a sweetness and a non-judgmental factor to it that the cast really managed to pull off, too. Especially for you and Bradley [Cooper], how did you all play these archetypal characters and still manage to make us see them as people?

SJ: I think—even though there was somebody that was being hurt in the process—the two characters really like each other. They connect, and so you can’t really hate them because it’s not like they’re being vindictive. She’s not looking to steal married men, and he’s not looking to have an affair. They both go into it knowing that there’s a third person in the relationship, but they really feel like maybe this is a critical point in their life. Even Drew [Barrymore]'s character said that sometimes these things happen and you don’t want to miss the boat. Who knows? This could be the person that you have children with, get married to, and spend the rest of your life with. I think that these two characters feel that way about each other. They make such a connection. Through ultimately its Bradley’s character’s fault of not being able to man up and really…

Industry: Man up…?

SJ: Well, she sees that he’s not willing, or just not able to be truthful and commit. She sees that weakness, and then it all falls apart. You can’t hate them, I think, because they don’t go into it with malice. They don’t go into their relationship with a kind of purpose to hurt somebody. That’s life, I guess; these things happen, don’t they?

Industry: To what extent does public knowledge of your personal life insinuate itself in a romantic comedy like that?

SJ: It’s sort of…well, you don’t want them to see the man behind the curtain. Our process is a very introspective one, and it’s strange to share that with the general public, just as you probably wouldn’t want to tell us all about your therapy sessions. In a way, acting is a very cathartic experience. You’re imparting your personal experience into the characters you play, and I’ve never quite been able to grasp the concept of giving away all of your secrets by describing your method and your process. It’s one thing if you’re a part of the Actors Studio and you’re working with a bunch of other actors, though guaranteed, no other actor is going to ask you what you’re working from, what you’re drawing from. I think it makes no sense to me why we would want to share that with anybody else.

Industry: You got married in 2008. What does marriage bring to a couple in love?

SJ: I have no perspective on that [laughs]. I think you should maybe ask me that question in twenty-five years.

Industry: Woody Allen does create these extraordinary female characters, of which you’ve played a number. What do you think set your character in Vicky Cristina Barcelona apart from those in Scoop and Match Point?

SJ: They’re all such different characters; other than blonde hair, it’d be hard to find some comparison between Christina and the character I played in Scoop. That diversity is part of the best thing about working with Woody—other than just getting to spend every day chatting with him and bothering him and poking him and stuff like that [laughs].

Industry: Poking him?

SJ: Sure, why not? Got to make sure he’s still awake [laughs]. But he writes such fantastic female roles; he has such an appreciation and understanding for the intricacies of the female

mind. I think he would say that we’re a superior species. He loves women…the way we think, and the results are some amazing roles.

Industry: Did you identify with Vicki's character?

SJ: I can identify with certain aspects of her philosophy…the sort of “seize the day’ attitude and her willingness to let life just happen in front of her. I can certainly appreciate that part of her philosophy, but we have our differences as well.

Industry: I’m intrigued by your relationship with Woody Allen in part because you rescued him on Match Point; you took the part after Kate Winslet dropped out. Ever since, people suggested that you’re his new muse. Are you comfortable with that idea and how do you perceive your relationship with him?

SJ: In every single junket that we’ve done so far, we always get the muse thing and we always say "no, it’s not that way," and it’s not that way. I was fortunate enough to fit in to the young girl part of the Match Point story, just the same as Judy Davis or Dianne Weist would fit into a certain part. But I think, too, that Woody and I appreciate how wonderful it is to work with your friends, and we always have a great time when we do it. We entertain each other and we understand each other.

Industry: So it’s more that now, you’re part of his rep company?

SJ: I think that might be more accurate, yeah. I don’t think that Woody sits at home with a typewriter, thinking "What is Scarlett doing now and how can her life inspire this tale?" [laughs]

Industry: Can you talk about how it was working in [Vicki Christina Barcelona]’s steamy scene with Penelope [Cruz] and Javier [Bardem]?

SJ: Well you know, it’s funny, because people are so conservative; these characters fall in love and people who fall in love are intimate. In shooting, the problem is that there’s, like, sixty grown men eating salami sandwiches on the set, waiting for when they can get up and watch the game or whatever. It’s work; I go home at the end of the day and I prepare for the next day.

Industry: I wanted to ask you about Lost In Translation for a second. There’s a YouTube clip around now that purports to boost the mic on dialogue between you and Bill Murray at the end of the film. In the movie, the audience can’t hear what was said, but did he actually say a line to you at that moment in filming?

SJ: I didn’t even know that, but I’m sure it’s not true because we weren’t mic’d. We had a boom operator, so I don’t know how that could be…elevated in volume.

Industry: Supposedly he says "Even though we can’t be together right now, know I’ll love you forever," or something like that.

SJ: That’s nice [laughs]. Well, honestly, nothing was written, and we did the scene so many times that I really couldn’t tell you what was said. It’s unfortunate, because then people can’t appreciate the filmmaker’s decision to not have that be audible—that there’s a poetry in that. People are so obsessed with discovering the secret of everything…uncovering the code. It’s sad.

Industry: In Black Dahlia, you seemed so comfortable as a sort of femme fatale in a film noir sort of way. Are you a student of film noir and what was your inspiration for the role?

SJ: I never thought that the character was a femme fatale, actually; she didn’t go out there to ruin someone’s relationship or steal the man or anything like that. She’s wasn’t trying to seduce him into this dark kind of relationship or torrid affair or anything. She likes him and she falls for him, but of course I have a pretty good film history for someone my age, too. I’ve seen a lot of those noir films, like The Maltese Falcon or The Third Man, but some of those films can be a little too cops-and-robbers for me. I like the more melodramatic Bette Davis films of that period. There wasn’t anyone that I really based the character off of. I wasn’t trying to copy someone’s performance or something like that, but as a modern actor, I recognize that we have this movement that sort of started in the ‘70’s of realism and the gritty brand of natural, so it was interesting to pair that with the dialogue. The dialogue is so stylized impossibly unrealistic; it was a challenge to keep the integrity and the realness while saying things like, "How could you, Dwight? How could you?" You never say those things. It was dated, and it was a challenge to make that not such a film type dialogue.

Industry: Do you have any concerns that you’ve been the object of desire in your last few films?

SJ: Concerns? I don’t think about it. I guess most films with a man and a woman, the woman is going to be the object of the man’s desire or vice versa. I just think of it as being a sort of traditional story and me being the young woman would probably play the object of someone’s affection.

Industry: What role did luck play in your success?

SJ: I feel pretty damn lucky. I know I had a chance that’s one in a million and certainly am doing a job that’s very…disposable. I feel constantly lucky that I haven’t been found out. But the truth is that at the same time, I think all people who are passionate about what they do feel like they have some kind of destiny. When I was a little kid, I was the singing, dancing sensation; at least I thought of myself as a sensation, and wanted to be on Broadway and all of those things. So now that I’m in this business, I feel that I was always meant to be in this as an actor and this is how it’s supposed to be. But at the same time, I feel lucky every time I do a movie… every time I get a film financed that I’ve been fighting for…every time I get cast in a production.