Scarlett Johansson has been on a winning streak lately. She won a Tony Award in 2010, and just two years later she co-starred as a leather-clad superhero in one of the biggest box office successes in Hollywood history. She’s acclaimed for her beauty. And tabloids, much to her chagrin, avidly follow every twist and turn in her private life. So Brave New Hollywood asks: is she just one lucky bird, or do her choices reflect a more calculated agenda? And why doesn’t she get more props for her success?
A sequel to Marvel’s The Avengers is already on the boards for 2015, in which Johansson would reprise her role as the Black Widow. Right now, however, she’s back on the silver screen with a juicy supporting turn in Hitchcock as real-life ingenue Janet Leigh.
Offscreen, Johansson has served as an active global ambassador for Oxfam. She also exhorted younger voters to turn up to the polls in support of President Barack Obama.
Now 28 years old, she made her acting debut at age nine in the 1994 film North, and earned her first real taste of acclaim just four years later when she was handpicked by Robert Redford to headline The Horse Whisperer. Johansson actually enjoyed a relatively painless transition from child star to adulthood.
So why doesn’t she get any credit? From our point of view, she has chosen her roles carefully with a mix of indies and auteur-driven pictures–such as Sofia Coppola’s acclaimed Lost in Translation, and a trio of films for Woody Allen—to more populist fare. Sure, some of them bombed, but even her flops can’t be laid solely on her shoulder (and besides, find an actor with a 100-percent winning track record.) She’s tested her chops on Broadway, and signed on for beauty and fashion campaigns representing L’Oreal and Calvin Klein, among others. Johansson has built an incredibly diverse career, so why isn’t she an A-lister on the level of Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston or Sandra Bullock?
Perhaps she’s as famous as she wants to get; her three-year marriage to Ryan Reynolds was breathlessly chronicled on gossip websites. And her new box office clout, post-Avengers, certainly catapults her into another league. But it’s telling that she went for a plum supporting role in Hitchcock, rather than settle for your standard paint-by-numbers romantic comedy. When Hollywood execs would have stabbed each other to get her next starring role, Johansson made a less conventional choice yet again. She is one of Brave New Hollywood’s top picks for Most Underrated Actor. What do you think?
CLICK HERE for the Hitchcock website.