ScarJo’s world! Even before she was taking on bad guys as Black Widow, Scarlett Johansson was a box office stable.
The actress began her movie career in the mid ‘90s and continued to make a name for herself into the 2000s, starring in 2003’s Girl With a Pearl Earring, 2007’s The Nanny Diaries, 2008’s The Other Boleyn Girl, 2009’s He’s Just Not That Into You and making her first Marvel appearance in 2010’s Iron Man 2. While her career took off, she faced backlash over the years for her accusations of whitewashing in 2017’s Ghost in the Shell, being cast to play a transgender man in Rub and Tug in 2019 and for defending frequent collaborator Woody Allen amid sexual abuse allegations.
“It can be embarrassing to have the experience of, ‘Wow, I was really off mark there,’” she told the Gentlewoman in March 2021, joking she “made a career” out of controversies.
Johansson has been also candid about struggles in her personal life, reflecting on her past marriages to Ryan Reynolds and Romain Dauriac in Vanity Fair’s November 2019 cover story.
“The first time I got married I was 23 years old,” she told the magazine, referring to her three-year union to the Deadpool star, which ended in their 2011 divorce. “I didn’t really have an understanding of marriage. Maybe I kind of romanticized it, I think, in a way. It’s a different part of my life now. I feel like I’m in a place in my life, I feel I’m able to make more active choices. I’m more present, I think, than I’ve been before.”
Johansson went on to welcome daughter Rose with Dauriac but split from the journalist in 2017.
“The idea of building a family, making a family, and having that work, I like that idea. I think that would be wonderful. I’ve always wanted that. I wanted that also in my marriage to my daughter’s father as well,” she continued. “It just wasn’t the right person.”
Johansson subsequently found The One in Colin Jost.
“Colin is still head over heels for Scarlett,” a source told Us Weekly in 2019. “He thinks she is incredible, kind, beautiful. He is beyond doting to her and loves showing her off when they’re out. Scarlett loves Colin too, and they are in it for the long haul. … Colin gets a starry-eyed look in his eyes when he talks about her.”
The twosome wed in October 2020. The following year, Johansson’s Black Widow finally landed her own film — which may serve as the character’s swan song.
“I have no plans to return as Natasha. I feel really satisfied with this film. It feels like a great way to go out for this chapter of my Marvel identity,” Johansson told Fatherly in July 2021. “I would love to be able to continue to collaborate with Marvel in other ways because I think there’s just an incredible wealth of stories there. Reimagining this genre is something that I find very interesting. I think there’s a lot of opportunities to tell these stories in different ways than audiences have come to expect.”
Scroll through to see Johansson through the years: