Scarlett Ingrid Johansson ( ; born November 22, 1984) is an American actress, singer, producer, and director. Her films as a leading actress have grossed over $15.4 billion worldwide, making her the second-highest-grossing actor in history. Her accolades include a British Academy Film Award and Tony Award, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards. She was the world's highest-paid actress in 2018, 2019, and 2025. Johansson first appeared as a child actress on stage in an off-Broadway play. She made her film debut in the fantasy comedy North (1994) and gained early recognition for her roles in Manny & Lo (1996), The Horse Whisperer (1998), and Ghost World (2001). In 2003, she marked her transition to mature roles with acclaimed performances in Lost in Translation, for which she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress, and Girl with a Pearl Earring. Her profile continued to grow with roles in A Love Song for Bobby Long (2004), The Prestige (2006), and the Woody Allen films Match Point (2005) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008). Johansson achieved global stardom for portraying Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow in eight films across the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), beginning with Iron Man 2 (2010) and culminating with her solo feature Black Widow (2021). During this period, Johansson also starred in the science fiction films Her (2013), Under the Skin (2013), and Lucy (2014). She received two simultaneous Academy Award nominations—Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress—for the respective performances as an actress going through a divorce in the drama Marriage Story (2019) and a single mother living in Nazi Germany in the satire Jojo Rabbit (2019), becoming one of the few actors to achieve this feat. On stage, Johansson starred in the Broadway revivals of A View from the Bridge (2010), for which she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (2013). As a singer, she released the albums Anywhere I Lay My Head (2008), and Break Up (2009), both of which charted on the Billboard 200. Time magazine named her on its Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world in 2021 and 2025. Labeled a sex symbol, Johansson has been referred to as one of the world's most attractive women by various media outlets. She is also a prominent brand endorser and supports several charitable causes.
Early life and education
Scarlett Ingrid Johansson was born on November 22, 1984, in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Johansson's father, Karsten Olaf Johansson, is an architect originally from Copenhagen, Denmark. Through him, she is granddaughter to Ejner Johansson, an art historian, screenwriter, and film director, whose own father was Swedish. Her mother, New Yorker Melanie Sloan, has worked as a producer. She comes from a Jewish family who fled Poland and Russia, originally surnamed Schlamberg; Johansson has referred to herself as Jewish. She has an older sister named Vanessa, who is also an actress, an older brother named Adrian, and a twin brother named Hunter. Johansson also has an older half-brother named Christian from her father's first marriage. She holds dual American and Danish citizenship. On a 2017 episode of PBS's Finding Your Roots, she discovered that her maternal great-grandfather's brother and extended family died in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust. Johansson attended PS 41, an elementary school in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. Her parents divorced when she was 13. She was particularly close to her maternal grandmother, Dorothy Sloan, a bookkeeper and schoolteacher, whom Johansson considered her best friend. Interested in a career in the spotlight from an early age, Johansson often put on song-and-dance routines for her family. She was particularly fond of musical theater and jazz hands. Johansson took lessons in tap dance and has said her parents were supportive of her career choice. She has described her childhood as very ordinary. As a child, Johansson practiced acting by staring in the mirror until she made herself cry, wanting to be like Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). At age seven, she was devastated when a talent agent signed one of her brothers instead of her, but later decided to become an actress anyway. After enrolling at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and auditioning for commercials, Johansson soon lost interest, stating "I didn't want to promote Wonder Bread." She shifted her focus to film and theater, making her first stage appearance with two lines in the off-Broadway play Sophistry with Ethan Hawke. Around this time, Johansson began studying at the Professional Children's School, a private educational institution for aspiring child actors in Manhattan.
Acting career
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