Scarlett Johansson is back on the big screen this weekend in the loooong-awaited “Black Widow” from Marvel Studios and Disney, finally here after endless pandemic-related delays. Johansson gets the chance to (once again, and perhaps for the last time) flex her already-established footprint in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Natasha Romanoff, who has also appeared in the “Avengers” series, “Captain America,” and more.
But the actress’ career is also distinguished by less splashy roles, whether in indie comedies or more softly spoken, serious dramas. In 2020 alone, she netted two Oscar nominations (also her first!), for the films “Jojo Rabbit” and “Marriage Story” in two wildly different roles — one as a German mother who’s secretly anti-Nazi during WWII, and the other as one-half of a thespian couple falling apart across U.S. coasts.
With “Black Widow” now in theaters (and streaming on Disney+), and Johansson taking her final bow as the S.H.I.E.L.D. spy, take a look back at her 10 best roles.
Peter Webber’s rapturous adaptation of Tracy Chevalier’s novel (itself inspired by the Johannes Vermeer painting of its title) gave Johansson her second of two breakout roles in 2003 following “Lost in Translation.” She brings a porcelain delicacy (very much capable of breaking at any point) to the role of Griet, the daughter of a blind painter, who is swept up into the current of Vermeer in a torrid bond that spirals out of control.
The actress balances naiveté with flintiness in playing amateur (and very much unversed in the ways of the world) photographer Cristina in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” opposite Rebecca Hall as her best friend Vicky. As with “Ghost World,” Johansson embodies one half of a friendship that’s slipping away into disintegration, and not only due to the arrival of the spellbinding Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) into the mix.
Johansson continued to cut her action movie teeth with Luc Besson’s kickass movie about a carefree student turned into a drug mule, then turned into a superhuman with telekinetic and telepathic abilities when a large quantity of drugs is leaked into her system. “Lucy” is something of a zany cross between a superhero movie and a Taiwanese gangster movie, but Johansson holds it together with a muscular action performance.
“Johansson’s in a class of her own here, delivering a soulful comic turn that keeps revealing new layers,” wrote IndieWire’s Chief Critic and Executive Editor Eric Kohn of Johansson’s turn as doting German (yet anti-Nazi) mother Rosie. The actress earned a Best Supporting Oscar nomination for her work in the film, which finds the actress taking a well-deserved break from Marvel duties.
Noah Baumbach’s heartbreaking vivisection of the collapse of a marriage, “Marriage Story” offers Johansson a big, chewy showcase in which to bust out her dramatic acting chops. The film is remembered (and now meme-ified) by many for the throwdown fight sequence between her character and Adam Driver as they hurl years-long resentments at each other, but Johansson gets possibly the film’s best scene early on as she breaks down to Laura Dern about the loss of selfhood she’s experienced in her relationship. The performance earned Johansson a Best Actress Academy Award nomination.
In “Ghost World,” everybody wants out, yet no one knows how to work the door. Nor do they want to. They’re more content to study the padding in the cell than to even consider an exit. That includes unapologetic and misunderstood loner Enid (Thora Birch) and her less tortured but still moody best friend Rebecca (Johansson). Two characters in search of an exit.
Terry Zwigoff’s ode to misfits and miscreants is a profound X-ray of a dying friendship, carried as equally as Birch by Johansson as the more arguably “basic” half of an iconic duo. As Rebecca, she’s wise, sarcastic, yet self-aware and resigned to the disguise she’ll have to wear if she wants to live ordinarily in the world after high school.
Johansson injects a fiery rage into Woody Allen’s adulterous spin on “Crime and Punishment” as Nola Rice, an American having a doomed affair with Jonathan Rhys Meyers in London. Though her character suffers an inevitably awful fate halfway through the movie, Johansson punctures the screen as a justifiably angry, though certainly not psychotic, Other Woman.
The actress won a surprise Best Actress Award at the Rome Film Festival for her voice-only turn in Spike Jonze’s quirky 21st-century romance “Her” as Samantha, a disembodied AI who soothes a heartbroken Joaquin Phoenix back into loving again. As Joaquin’s character and Samantha grow closer, and she starts to acquire sentience, Johansson delivers the necessary depth to bring a performance entirely invisible on the screen to life.
Jonathan Glazer’s nightmarish succubus-from-space drama “Under the Skin” demands a mostly wordless performance from Johansson, who as “The Female” is sent under uncertain circumstances to Earth to harvest the souls of unwitting men.
To achieve that, Johansson participated in many of these scenes without a script, and with non-actors caught unawares as she attempts to pick them up in a van and take them back to her kinky lair.
A lot could be said about how this film is about what it means to be human, but as refracted through Johansson’s glassy-eyed, slowly unfurling performance, “Under the Skin” is actually really about what it means not to be human — and the consequences therein when dropped down into mankind. Johansson embodies what it looks like to be an alien coming apart at the seams.
Though a teen Johansson already had indie cred after starring in films like “Ghost World” and “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” “Lost in Translation” is the movie that put her on the map as a sophisticated talent way beyond her years.
And nearly two decades later, her work as Charlotte in Sofia Coppola’s dreamy, Tokyo-set brief encounter remains Johansson’s very best. Though 19 upon the film’s release, Johansson imbues her adrift philosophy grad with a piercing maturity well-matched to Bill Murray’s down-and-out actor Bob.
