SCARLETT JOHANSSON has been nominated for two Oscars and appeared in more than 50 movies, including blockbusters grossing £10billion.
She has won over critics and her peers, becoming the world’s highest-paid actress in 2018 and 2019.
But the hardest person to please is her seven-year-old daughter Rose, who treats her like a “performing Alexa”.
Scarlett said: “My daughter thinks I’m a jukebox or her Alexa. She loves to dance and get me to sing Disney songs.
“I’ll sing her something from Moana then she’ll shout out ‘Next!’ Then The Little Mermaid . . . ‘Next!’
“Then she’ll say, ‘That one sucks — next!’ At the moment she gets a kick out of me playing evil Jafar from Aladdin, which is terrifying! I wouldn’t cast myself as that.”
The 37-year-old actress lends that voice to animated sequel Sing 2, which this week kicked Spider-Man: No Way Home off top spot at the box office.
Its opening week has outperformed that of the first Sing, which came out in 2016 and took £400million worldwide.
The role is a far cry from some of her Marvel films, in which she plays glamorous reformed assassin Natasha “Black Widow” Romanoff.
She said: “Sing is such a brilliantly happy film.
“You look back at Iron Man 2 and while it was really fun and had a lot of great moments, my character was talked about like she’s a piece of something, a possession, a piece of ass.”
Scarlett today reveals how happy she is to be taking a break from superhero movies, being a mum to ten-month-old son Cosmo and relishing being Rose’s idol.
Scarlett — whose movies’ combined takings make her one of the highest-grossing film stars of all-time — was born and raised in New York.
Her big-screen debut came in 1994 as a nine-year-old in Bruce Willis comedy North, before starring with legend Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer four years later.
Her breakout role was in 2003’s Oscar-nominated Lost In Translation alongside Bill Murray, playing a married college graduate who strikes up a friendship with a fading movie star in Tokyo.
Since 2012 she has been a mainstay of Marvel’s Avengers franchise and, most recently, the standalone Black Widow movie.
After years of combining all-action roles with more challenging dramatic fare — including playing an anti-Nazi mum in Hitler’s Germany in pitch-black comedy Jojo Rabbit — she says being in a kids’ film is a breath of fresh air.
In Sing 2, Scarlett voices porcupine Ash.
Rose loves to dance and gets me to sing Disney songs. I sing something and she shouts ‘Next!’ then ‘Next’ then ‘That one sucks…Next!’
Scarlett Johansson
That was great news for Rose, her daughter with ex-husband Romain Dauriac, a French journalist, as Rose will finally be able to watch one of her mum’s movies.
Scarlett said: “Seeing my voice come out of a punk-rock porcupine might be a bit too much for her.
“But it also might be the only movie I’ve ever made that she’ll be able to see though.
“I grew up watching Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, Cinderella and all those films.
“The great thing for her is there are other characters she can get into now (beyond typical Disney princesses), like the ones in Sing.
“It’ll be pretty cool her mum is in that film too.”
Scarlett has barely had a break from acting in 20 years, averaging almost three films a year.
“But since becoming a mum she tries to spend more time with her kids.
She added of Rose: “She shadows me all the time, which is wonderful.
“In a few years she’s not going to want to have anything to do with me, so I should soak it all up!
“But there’s definitely times where she’s on the other side of the bathroom door and I’m like, ‘Rose, you gotta give me a minute!’ Everybody needs their time.”
Scarlett’s personal life has had its ups and downs
She married Deadpool actor Ryan Reynolds in 2008, aged 23.
They divorced three years later and she said: “I didn’t really have an understanding of marriage. Maybe I kind of romanticised it in a way.”
Scarlett started dating Romain in 2012.
They had Rose in 2014 and married the same year but a long-distance relationship between New York and Paris led to a split in 2017.
She married comedian Colin Jost in 2020 and last year gave birth to their first child, Cosmo. Rose is still getting used to the arrival.
Iron Man had great moments but my character was talked about like she’s a possession, a piece of ass. Sing is such a brilliantly happy film.
Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett said: “She’ll come home and she’s talking a mile a minute and I have to remind her, ‘Say hi to your brother’. And she goes, ‘He’s so cute’.”
The actress splits her time between homes in New York and the Hollywood Hills.
Less time on set means she can do “normal mother” things, such as cooking for the kids.
She said: “I love it. It’s best just letting kids discover food . . . without making it feel like a chore.
“I’ve never tried to force my kid to eat anything she didn’t like, or try to pack in an extra carrot.”
Scarlett talked last year about feeling “hyper-sexualised” early in her career.
She blames a dominance of white, male directors but reckons Hollywood has improved for women in recent years.
Recalling her role in 2010’s Iron Man 2, opposite Robert Downey Jr as tech ace Tony Stark, she said: “Tony at one point calls her ‘a piece of meat’ and maybe at that time that actually felt like a compliment, because my thinking was different.
“Now people, young girls, are getting a much more positive message and it’s been incredible to be a part of that shift and be able to come out the other side and be a part of that old story, but also progress, evolve.”
One of the hardest things about Sing 2, where her co-stars include Matthew McConaughey, Taron Egerton and rock star Bono, was keeping it secret — even from friends — that she would sing with the U2 frontman, a hero to her growing up.
She said: “It was so top-secret that I was going to duet with Bono. I was exploding with excitement but I couldn’t tell any- one.
“I could hear my 13-year-old self saying, ‘How is this real?’ I recorded my bit and because I was living in this secrecy, I didn’t have time to process it.
“But now I have . . . I have sung with Bono! It’s so surreal. It’s awesome.”
Rose has even bigger aspirations for her mum.
Scarlett said: “My daughter and I share the dream that I will, someday, be a Disney princess.”
- Sing 2 is in cinemas now.
