Scarlett fever

Twenty-year-old Scarlett has Hollywood at her feet.

10 April 2012

When you meet Scarlett Johansson, she looks you dead in the eye. It's as if there is some kind of assessment going on, a gauging of the foe. Even at the tender age of 20 she shows no reticence or doubt, just this native guile, a fierce intelligence as rare as pearls in her peer group of beautiful starlets. Lindsay Lohan is a year younger. Artistically, they might as well be on different planets.

'Shall we begin?' she asks. Everything that passes before those steady blue eyes, be it the press or a $120 million movie, takes the shape of a challenge. This determination is why she has risen with meteoric velocity to Hollywood's stratosphere and become Woody Allen's latest muse.

It's also why Michael Bay (Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys II), usually so keen to pack his macho epics with the broadest of names, wanted this remarkable actress, whose reputation was founded on poise rather than punch, to co-star alongside Ewan McGregor in his new science-fiction thriller The Island.

'I wasn't surprised,' she says of being asked finally to enter the blockbuster arena. 'I was just thrilled that the studio and Michael could see me outside of being a dramatic actor. I've had 12 years of all different kinds of films, but I have never done an action film until now.'

Set in 2019, The Island is about as far removed from Lost In Translation as you could get. Johansson's Jordan Two-Delta is a childlike clone who escapes her underground world alongside Ewan McGregor's Lincoln Six-Echo to go on the run in the real world, intent on meeting her 'real' self.

And, as this comes from the director of Bad Boys II, that means one long, brutal demolition derby after another as the clones' irked controllers give chase. 'It was physically exhausting,' Johansson admits, never having been a natural 'gym freak'. 'We were running around for 14 hours then we'd get off work and hit the gym for two hours. You just get into this mode that allows you to do it.'

As for McGregor, in his case she gives in to a rare attack of Hollywood-speak: 'He's a sweetheart. He has a wonderful family and he's such a regular guy. We laughed a lot. When you've been running for your life, youwant someone to be silly with.'

It's not just her togetherness or the deep, sexy rumble of her voice that makes you forget how young Johansson is - after 24 films there is a real permanence about her. Born in New York in, wait for it, 1984, she beat her twin brother, Hunter, to the world by three minutes, and has two older brothers and an older sister.

She was soon nagging her mother, Melanie, to allow her to pursue acting. She was a gawky kid who relied on her talent rather than her prettiness to go places. And go places she did, with a scattering of bit parts in kiddie fodder like North and Home Alone 3, before breaking through in Robert Redford's The Horse Whisperer. At 12 years old she was hankering for challenging roles rather than exposure. 'There's no reason to dumb things down just because you're working with kids,' she asserts of her earlier self.

At 13, her parents divorced, and her mother moved to Los Angeles while her father, Karsten, an architect, stayed put in New York. Johansson now spends an equal amount of time with both of them, but counts Manhattan as her home. Career-wise, there came a transformation.

Smoothing out the awkward angles of her youth, she seemed to bypass the hair-flicking teen set entirely, to arrive fully formed as an adult actress. 'Tons of that stuff used to come my way,' she says disdainfully of the Lohan-Hilary Duff level of material. 'A lot of it was awful. All those teenage slaying movies, and movies about girls who have deformities then become cheerleaders and marry the prom king!'

She had her eyes on greater prizes. However, this time she may have missed. The Island has foundered at the US box office, pulling in only $12.5 million in its opening weekend. A failure partly put down to a confusing marketing campaign and the ambiguous title.

'There's certainly no island in the movie as such,' admits Johansson. 'The Island is just the idea of paradise that we're hoping to reach.' So what would Johansson take if she were stranded on the hypothetical desert island? 'My sister, sun-block and my mum. The girls.'

Her family, especially her mother and manager Melanie, play a vital role in not only guiding her career but keeping her grounded as the clamour of fame grows louder. Her mum, by all accounts, has been nagging her about her incessant workload. She's made 10 films on the trot without any significant break.

'She would probably like me to take a vacation,' laughs Johansson. 'Probably with her. But she gets it, she knows I am happy, she knows what I want. She's good in that way. Even though she might advise me to not take something and hang out at home in her motherly way, she gets it.'

With such canny self-possession, Johansson is not likely to lose focus as her star rises ever higher. Thus, when the chat shows and magazines and photo-shoots come calling, it's always on her terms. 'You have to know when to say, "No, I have had a really long week, I can't deal with this right now."' Johansson has a reputation for standing firm when it comes to saying, 'No'. Not that she's difficult, just adamant about what is good for her.

'You have to have time for yourself when you are working. The media side of things is what gets you lopsided - when you start believing that you are the most incredible thing of the past 10 years, or whatever they are saying.'

For the time being, the path remains straight and true. She has Woody Allen's Match Point ready for release (it was completed before she started The Island) and has already shot Brian De Palma's period thriller The Black Dahlia. Then it's back to London - her second favourite city after New York: 'It's a beautiful city, with a beautiful history, a place of solace' - to shoot Allen's Fall Project 2006.

'He is fantastic,' she says of the 69-year-old director. 'He would probably want me to say he was a beast or a monster or something: "When you do your press interviews let them know how horrible I am!"'

All this success inevitably comes springloaded with gossip. Each week brings talk of a new boyfriend from the ranks of available celebrity hunks from Benicio Del Toro to Jared Leto to Josh Hartnett. Although she's not telling. 'I don't talk about my personal relationships, it always ends up kicking you in the face. But I've read a lot of things about myself and think, "Wow! That girl sounds really saucy."'

The negative sides of the industry are not about to shake the indomitable Miss Johansson. A friend of hers was staggered she still walks, unaccompanied, around New York. 'You have to get a bodyguard,' he demanded. 'I was like, "I'm not going to walk around with people.

I know this city like the back of my hand." I refuse to adjust to something like that. I'm from Manhattan.'

The Island opens Fri 12 Aug.

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