Scarlett Ingrid Johansson (born November 22, 1984) is an American and Danish actress. The world’s highest-paid actress in 2018 and 2019, she has featured multiple times on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list. Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2021. Her films have grossed over $14.3 billion worldwide, making Johansson the highest-grossing box office star of all time. She has received various accolades, including a Tony Award and a British Academy Film Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards.
Born to a Danish father and an American mother in New York City, Johansson first appeared on stage in an off-Broadway play as a child actor. 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). Johansson shifted to adult roles in 2003 with her performances in Lost in Translation, which won her a BAFTA Award for Best Actress. She continued to gain praise for playing a 17th-century servant in Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003), a troubled teenager in A Love Song for Bobby Long (2004) and a seductress in Match Point (2005). The latter marked her first collaboration with Woody Allen, who later directed her in Scoop (2006) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008). Johansson’s other works of this period include The Prestige (2006) and the albums Anywhere I Lay My Head (2008) and Break Up (2009), both of which charted on the Billboard 200.
In 2010, Johansson debuted on Broadway in a revival of A View from the Bridge, which won her a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress, and began portraying Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Iron Man 2. She reprised the role in eight films, leading up to her solo feature Black Widow (2021), gaining global stardom. During this period, Johansson 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 roles of an actress going through a divorce in the drama Marriage Story (2019) and a single mother in Nazi Germany in the satire Jojo Rabbit (2019), becoming one of the few actors to achieve this feat.
Labeled a sex symbol, Johansson has been referred to as one of the world’s most attractive women by various media outlets. She is a prominent brand endorser and supports several charitable causes. Divorced from actor Ryan Reynolds and businessman Romain Dauriac, Johansson has been married to comedian Colin Jost since 2020. She has two children, one with Dauriac and another with Jost.
| Full Name: | Scarlett Ingrid Johansson |
| Date of Birth: | November 22, 1984 |
| Zodiac Sign: | Sagittarius |
| Birthplace: | New York City, NY |
| Education: | Professional Children’s School |
| Partners: | Colin Jost (2020-present) Romain Dauriac (2014-2017) Ryan Reynolds (2008-2011) |
| Children: | Rose Dauriac Cosmo Jost |
| Siblings: | Vanessa Johansson (Sibling) Hunter Johansson (Sibling) Adrian Johansson (Sibling) Christian Johansson (Half Sibling) |
| Parents: | Melanie Sloane and Karsten Johansson |
| Eye Color: | Green |
| Hair Color: | Naturally brown |
| Height: | 5′ 3″ (1.60 m) |
Early life
A red-brick three-story building with a tree outside it.
The Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, where Johansson learned to act as a child Scarlett Ingrid Johansson was born on November 22, 1984, in the Manhattan borough of New York City.
Her father, Karsten Olaf Johansson, is an architect originally from Copenhagen, Denmark. Her paternal grandfather, Ejner Johansson, was 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 an Ashkenazi Jewish family who fled Poland and Russia, originally surnamed Schlamberg, and Johansson identifies as Jewish.
She has an older sister, Vanessa, also an actress; an older brother, Adrian; and a twin brother, Hunter. She also has an older half-brother, Christian, from her father’s first marriage. Johansson 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 during the Holocaust in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Johansson attended PS 41, an elementary school in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. Her parents divorced when she was thirteen. She was particularly close to her maternal grandmother, Dorothy Sloan, a bookkeeper and schoolteacher; they often spent time together and Johansson considered Dorothy 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. She took lessons in tap dance, and states that 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. At age seven, she was devastated when a talent agent signed one of her brothers instead of her, but she later decided to become an actress anyway. She enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and began auditioning for commercials, but soon lost interest: “I didn’t want to promote Wonder Bread.” She shifted her focus to film and theater, making her first stage appearance in the off-Broadway play Sophistry with Ethan Hawke, in which she had two lines. Around this time, she began studying at the Professional Children’s School, a private educational institution for aspiring child actors in Manhattan.
