Scarlett Johansson in a silver dress

Johansson's performance as Grace in The Horse Whisperer (1998) earned her a Hollywood Reporter Young Star award. And previously her Manny & Lo (1996) role received a nod by the Independent Spirit Awards. Scarlett has an older brother and sister and a twin brother. She divides her time between New York with her dad, and Los Angeles with her mother. Her acting career was launched in the off-Broadway production of 'Sophistry' with Ethan Hawke.


Johansson has revealed that she has no problem with her male co-stars seeing her breasts, as she considers them to be her favourite feature. "I'm proud of my girls. They're my charms, my feminine wiles", she said in a January 2005 interview for Harper's Bazaar.

Her father Karsten Johansson, a NY architect, and mother Melanie Johansson, her manager, now divorced, separated when she was 13.



"Well, you put a little piece of yourself into every character that you do. Even if you're playing some psychotic person, which of course I'm not, some part of you is in that character and it's hopefully believable. I always come back to the fact that my own instinct is better than something I build in my mind."

"It would be hellish to have the pressure of putting on a Hollywood ending or putting in a scene where Vermeer sees Griet washing her breasts" - commenting on why she was glad that Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) was a small foreign production.

"It's a place of solace. I love London, it's an amazing city. I've met some wonderful people there and I also have some family there. I'm from New York, so I feel very at home in London. It's like a metropolitan breeding ground for culture, art, music and diversity. It's a beautiful city, with beautiful history. In Hollywood, it's hard to step outside of the circle once you're in it. But in London I was really moved by how accepted I felt there. There was definitely less need to wear my big sunglasses!"