We all love Scarlett Johansson for a number of reasons. She’s an incredible actor as well as an entrepreneur and has taken both fields by storm thanks to her hard work, talent, and determination. This makes us wonder, did a young ScarJo believe that she was going to make it big in the film industry one day? Before becoming the world’s favorite Black Widow, the actress did a handful of roles here and there which helped pave her way to fame.
One of these projects was Sofia Coppola’s 2003 rom-com/drama Lost in Translation. While the film is responsible for taking her acting career to great heights, Scarlett Johansson had a tough time working on the movie. Why? Well, for starters, she was only seventeen and away from home.
Scarlett Johansson Recalls Her Lost in Translation Experience
Despite having worked in many films before Lost in Translation, the 2003 Sofia Coppola film was Scarlett Johansson’s ticket to fame. She played the role of Charlotte, an American college graduate in Tokyo, Japan. There, Charlotte was accompanying her husband (Giovanni Ribisi) when she came across Bill Murray’s Bob Harris, a fading American movie star who came to Japan to work in a few advertisements. The two bond over their shared insomnia.
Johansson was only seventeen years old when she filmed Lost in Translation. At such a young age, the actress was far away from her home and things naturally became a little tough for her to handle.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, Johansson recalled her time on the set of the film stating,
That movie was hard to make. It was far away. It was 26 days. We were shooting day for night, and night for day. I don’t know that we totally knew what it was. Sofia did. She saw what we were getting, but it wasn’t like everything was on the page. The script was 76 pages.
On a flight to Berlin, Johansson decided to take an Ambien, basically a sleeping pill, and went on to have what she calls an out-of-body experience.
I felt like I was on methamphetamines or something. I had such a weird, out-of-body, speedy, strange experience.
In another interview, this time with Variety, Johansson clarified that while the movie was tough on her, it wasn’t miserable. She was just young, homesick, and missing her boyfriend.
It wasn’t miserable. It was challenging because I was very young and away from my high school boyfriend. I was sort of isolated in that environment, and it was just hard work. Looking back on it, the whole thing felt like jet lag.
Despite the problems she went through during the shoot, everything seemed to work out in the end. The film has a score of 95% on Rotten Tomatoes and was lauded by both fans and critics. It was also a hit at the box office, making $118 million on a budget of $4 million.
Lost in Translation went on to receive 4 nominations at the Academy Awards, with Coppola taking home the trophy for Best Original Screenplay. Johansson also won Best Actress at BAFTA as well as a Golden Globe nomination.
Scarlett Johansson Believes the Film “Groomed” Her Into a Stereotype
After playing the role of Charlotte, it didn’t take long for Johansson to become the It Girl of Hollywood. However, that wasn’t as appealing to the actress as it may seem since it caused her to get typecast in the “bombshell” kind of roles.
During her appearance on the Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi podcast, Johansson got real about how Lost in Translation impacted her career in Hollywood by typecasting her in roles where she was simply an “object of desire.”
Johansson stated,
I did ‘Lost in Translation’ and ‘Girl With the Pearl Earring,’ and by that point, I was 18, 19 and I was coming into my own womanhood and learning my own desirability and sexuality. I was kind of being groomed, in a way, to be this what you call a bombshell-type actor. I was playing the other woman and the object of desire and I suddenly found myself cornered in this place. I couldn’t get out of it.
She added that while this stereotype may be desirable for others, it wasn’t for her as she knew that it was a light that would only burn bright for a while before fading away for good.
It would be easy to sit across from someone in that situation and go, ‘This is working.’ But for that kind of bombshell, you know, that burns bright and quick and then it’s done and you don’t have opportunity beyond that. It was an interesting, weird conundrum to be in but it really came back to working at it and trying to carve a place in different projects and work in great ensembles.
Even when Johansson got the chance to play a superhero, aka Black Widow, she was faced with the sexualization of the character which she worked hard to re-work.
Despite the challenges she faced in her career, Johansson’s perseverance allowed her to rise high above the limiting notions people set for her, becoming one of the best actresses in Hollywood right now.
You can stream Lost in Translation on Max.
