As if a strange year couldn’t have gotten any stranger, in September 2011 Johansson was revealed as the victim of a hacking—personal, intimate photographs, intended for Reynolds, suddenly went viral on the Internet. Rather than cower, she called in the authorities. The alleged perpetrator was arrested and charged with multiple felonies. “It wasn’t just me,” Johansson says. “It was others. I don’t want to be a victim and say, ‘Oh, well’ and just hide my head in shame. Somebody stole something from me. . . . It’s sick. I don’t want people like that to slide.”
The incident clearly still rattles her. “When all those photos came out, of course I go out to dinner and think, Goddamn it, these people have all seen my. . . .” Johansson’s voice trails off. “That’s terrible. You know what I mean? You can’t not think that. Even if they haven’t, you’re paranoid.
“I don’t want pity,” she says. Her solution, she says, was “tuning it all out”—to stop paying attention to the gossip and the endless churn of celebrity coverage. She says she had never paid much attention to it before, but she imposed a strict blackout. “I have to say I’m way happier because of it,” she says. “It’s nice. It allows me, I think, to be more creative. It’s nice not to be so self-aware.”
Soon a sleek and red-haired Johansson will be seen in The Avengers, reprising her Iron Man 2 role as Natasha Romanoff, a.k.a. Black Widow, alongside an accomplished cast that includes Downey as Iron Man, Evans as Captain America, Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk, and Samuel L. Jackson as the group’s eye-patched ringleader, Nick Fury. Once more Johansson will be in a black catsuit, and there are elaborate stunts and hand-to-hand combat, but she says she was drawn by her character’s murkiness. “Female superheroes normally are superlame.” Natasha/Black Widow “is kind of gray. I like that about her.”
Based on the Marvel comic series, The Avengers was written and directed by Joss Whedon, best known for television’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Whedon calls Johansson the “least diva-like human ever on a movie set” and praises her physical preparation for the part. “She was throwing herself all over the place.” Johansson readied herself for the film with extensive martial-arts training, which left her impressively svelte and sinewy. But such a physically demanding role was not without hazards. “You get beat up a lot,” she says. “It’s painful.”
“She’s a badass,” Ruffalo says of Black Widow. “Scarlett played it really well, with a wink in her eye.”
The Avengers was partly shot in Cleveland, and one night during filming, Johansson, Evans, costar Jeremy Renner, and a few others ventured out to Edison’s, a local pub where an open-mike night was under way. After a while, Johansson wandered over to the stage, and after a brief consult with the band, she was singing the Beatles’ “Rocky Raccoon.”
“Scarlett had said we should get up and sing a song,” recalls Evans. “I really thought she was joking.”
“I don’t think anybody knew who it was,” says Joe Kahn, the bar’s manager. “I was like, ‘Who’s this pretty girl with the great voice?’ And it turns out to be her.”
“Honestly, it’s not that surprising,” Johansson says. “I’m a singing, dancing, jazz-hands kid. What can I say?”
Johansson will follow The Avengers with another unconventional choice, playing an alien in Under the Skin, a sci-fi thriller from director Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast). She recently signed on to play Janet Leigh in a film based on the making of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (talk about knives and crying!), and she’s going to play a small part in a film written by actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt. She’s also keen to direct; she’s adapting a screenplay based on Truman Capote’s debut novel, Summer Crossing, about a privileged New York teen spending a lost, hot summer in the city. Early, rediscovered, underappreciated Capote may be an old-fashioned, eccentric choice, but it’s very Scarlett.
None of these obligations will stop Johansson from getting out and campaigning for Barack Obama’s reelection. She was on the ground early in Iowa in 2008, rallying young voters for his historic caucus win—“the most incredible thing”—and remains a dedicated supporter. She’s also been active in the upcoming New York mayoral campaign, throwing her support behind Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer, a longtime family friend for whom Johansson’s twin brother, Hunter, has worked. “She has a real understanding of issues relating to education, health care, and the government,” Stringer says of Scarlett, “in a way you’d think that’s what she did full-time.”
In her romantic life, there is a welcome calm. Lately, Johansson has been dating a New York–based advertising creative director named Nate Naylor; they’ve been photographed by the paparazzi on the Manhattan streets and vacationing in Hawaii—the actress and the real-life Don Draper. Seeing someone out of the public eye may be a comparatively tranquil experience for Johansson, but for her new beau, dating a celebrity has been a real change. Johansson seems amused by how well Naylor has dealt with the sudden attention. “It must be very strange for him,” she says, smiling. “It’s totally bizarre. It’s an adjustment—I mean, it’s got to be an adjustment for him way more than it was for me at nineteen. But he’s really remarkably good about it.”
The subject brightens her. This is where Johansson wants to be, not swamped by gloomy tabloid headlines she has spent most of her career trying to avoid. She wants to get back to normalcy, to be among friends, to return to being Scarlett, the kid from Greenwich Village’s Public School 41 who liked pro wrestling and now watches medical reality shows and the hipster spoof Portlandia. Who Woody Allen says has “the acting ability to be not just a passing pinup girl but a genuinely meaningful actress.” Who Sonia Boyajian claims is “effortlessly glamorous” but also makes an insanely good chocolate cake. “I’ve been to many a dinner at Scarlett’s house, and she is the hostess with the mostess,” Boyajian says. Of course, Johansson now has new kitchen-knife skills (and, perhaps, a pair of onion goggles).
“Yeah, everything’s been really great right now,” Johansson says. “It’s been a good time. I’ve had peace. Relative peace. I just want to work on things that are really hard, and when I’m not working on things that are really hard, I want to hang out with people I like to be with, and that’s it.”
There have been trying, complicated, exasperating moments, but she is choosing to be philosophical about it. “From that comes a lot of really amazing things,” Johansson says before adding optimistically, “I think it will be an interesting year.”
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