Scarlett Johansson

Scarlett Ingrid Johansson was born on November 22, 1984, in Manhattan, New York City. She is an American actress, singer, producer, and director. Her work as a lead in films has brought in more than $15.4 billion globally, placing her second among the highest-grossing actors ever. She has won a BAFTA and a Tony, and has been nominated for two Oscars and five Golden Globes. In 2018, 2019, and 2025, she was the highest-paid actress in the world.

Johansson began acting as a child in an off-Broadway play. Her first movie role was in the 1994 fantasy comedy *North*. She got early notice for parts in *Manny & Lo* (1996), *The Horse Whisperer* (1998), and *Ghost World* (2001). In 2003, she moved into adult roles with well-received performances in *Lost in Translation*—which earned her a BAFTA for Best Actress—and *Girl with a Pearl Earring*. Her career kept building with appearances in *A Love Song for Bobby Long* (2004), *The Prestige* (2006), and Woody Allen’s *Match Point* (2005) and *Vicky Cristina Barcelona* (2008).

She reached worldwide fame by playing Natasha Romanoff, also known as Black Widow, across eight Marvel Cinematic Universe films, starting with *Iron Man 2* (2010) and ending with her own solo movie, *Black Widow* (2021). During that time, she also starred in the science-fiction films *Her* (2013), *Under the Skin* (2013), and *Lucy* (2014). In 2019, she received two Academy Award nominations at once—for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress—for her roles as a woman going through a divorce in *Marriage Story* and a single mother in Nazi Germany in *Jojo Rabbit*. That made her one of the few actors to achieve such a double nomination.

On stage, she performed in Broadway revivals of *A View from the Bridge* (2010), winning a Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Play, and *Cat on a Hot Tin Roof* (2013). As a singer, she put out two albums: *Anywhere I Lay My Head* (2008) and *Break Up* (2009), both of which made the Billboard 200 chart.

*Time* magazine included her on its list of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2021 and again in 2025. She has often been described as a sex symbol and one of the most attractive women in the world by various media. She also endorses major brands and supports several charities.

Johansson grew up in Manhattan. Her father, Karsten Olaf Johansson, is an architect from Copenhagen, Denmark. Through him, she is the granddaughter of Ejner Johansson, an art historian, screenwriter, and film director whose own father was Swedish. Her mother, Melanie Sloan, is a New Yorker who worked as a producer. Her mother’s family is Jewish, originally from Poland and Russia with the surname Schlamberg; Johansson has called herself Jewish. She has an older sister, Vanessa, who is also an actress, an older brother named Adrian, and a twin brother named Hunter. There is also an older half-brother, Christian, from her father’s first marriage. She holds dual American and Danish citizenship. In a 2017 episode of PBS’s *Finding Your Roots*, she learned that her maternal great-grandfather’s brother and extended family died in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust.

She attended PS 41, an elementary school in Greenwich Village. Her parents divorced when she was 13. She was very close to her maternal grandmother, Dorothy Sloan, a bookkeeper and schoolteacher whom Johansson considered her best friend. From a young age, she wanted a career in the spotlight and often put on song-and-dance routines for her family. She loved musical theater and jazz hands, took tap dance lessons, and says her parents supported her choice. She describes her childhood as very ordinary.

As a child, she practiced acting by staring in the mirror until she made herself cry, inspired by Judy Garland in *Meet Me in St. Louis* (1944). At age seven, she was crushed when a talent agent signed one of her brothers instead of her, but she decided to become an actress anyway. After enrolling at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and trying commercial auditions, she lost interest, saying, “I didn’t want to promote Wonder Bread.” She turned her focus to film and theater, making her first stage appearance with two lines in the off-Broadway play *Sophistry* alongside Ethan Hawke. Around that time, she began studying at the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan.

At nine, she got her first paid role as a sketch character on an episode of *Late Night with Conan O’Brien*. Later that year, she made her film debut as John Ritter’s daughter in the fantasy comedy *North* (1994). She says that on set, she knew intuitively what to do. She then played smaller parts, including the daughter of Sean Connery’s and Kate Capshaw’s characters in the mystery thriller *Just Cause* (1995) and an art student in *If Lucy Fell* (1996). Her first leading role was as Amanda, the younger sister of a pregnant teenager who runs away from a foster home in *Manny & Lo* (1996), alongside Aleksa Palladino and her brother Hunter. Her performance earned positive reviews: the *San Francisco Chronicle* noted that the film “grows on you, largely because of the charm of… Scarlett Johansson,” while critic Mick LaSalle praised her “peaceful aura” and said that if she could keep it through puberty, she could become an important actress. She received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Lead Female for that role.