Scarlett Johansson thinks her career could have gone a different direction if she continued to take “bombshell-type” roles. The 38-year-old actress sat down for a rare podcast interview on Table for Two With Bruce Bozzi and recognized how 2003’s Lost in Translation set her on a certain trajectory.
“It sort of was my transition into my adult career,” Johansson, who made her film debut at age 9, recalled. “I had a really hard time doing Lost in Translation. I was 17, I was far away, I was working with Bill Murray who I was an enormous fan of and he obviously has a very big personality and he’s sort of a formidable character at times. Our characters have this kind of real love for one another, this profound relationship, and that was hard for me to — I struggled with that for different reasons.”
Weeks after wrapping Sofia Coppola’s romantic dramedy, Johansson went on to film Girl With the Pearl Earring alongside Colin Firth. After finishing both movies, Johansson felt like she was in a “weird fever dream.” “Young girls like that are really objectified and that’s just a fact,” Johansson said at one point, explaining how her career began with “this path of ingénue.”
“I did Lost in Translation and Girl With the Pearl Earring and by that point, I was 18, 19, and I was coming into my own womanhood and learning my own desirability and sexuality. I think it was because of that trajectory I had been sort of launched towards — I really got stuck,” Johansson told Bozzi on the podcast, which is co-produced by iHeartMedia and Air Mail. “I was kind of being groomed, in a way, to be this what you call a bombshell-type of actor. I was playing the other woman and the object of desire and I suddenly found myself cornered in this place like I couldn’t get out of it. Right around that time is when I met with Bryan.”
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