My Five Dads

Scarlett Johansson is one of Hollywood’s most accomplished young women. And she’d like to take this moment to honor a few good men.

Writer: Jason Killingsworth, photography by Brea Souders
Features, Issue 43, Published online on 28 Apr 2008 Page 1 of 4 Next >

When I first encounter Scarlett Johansson, she's at a playground in NYC's West Village, conversing with a man at least twice her age. The two are seated. She's slightly hunched over, intent, gesturing. He's leaning back thoughtfully, legs cross, absorbing, considering. There are no squealing kids running around because Village Mega Playground is a full-service post-producting complex for film and television project. Meaning: No monkey bars, just bars down the street in which to monkey around. But Johansson doesn't have time for that right now. She's more interested in arriving at the final cut of her five-minute short film, which also happens to be the precocious 23-year-old actor's directorial debut.

“Can we squeeze a few extra seconds into the scene right before Kevin gets off the train, maybe just two extra beats?” Johansson asks the man, industry legend Craig McKay, who received an Oscar nomination in 1992 for his editing work on Silence of the Lambs. McKay tilts his head slightly and rocks in the desk chair as if to nod subtly with his entire body, yeah, that just might work.

We’re in a cozy editing bay on the building’s eighth floor. This space off the main hallway isn’t gaudily high-tech or particularly fashion-forward in terms of decor. It feels more like a college dorm room—sparsely furnished with a small red couch, a few bookcases and a desk with three flat-panel monitors. Natural light spills through several rectangular windows that overlook the glistening Hudson River. There’s a large bulletin board on the wall covered in pencil-sketched storyboards.

Observing Johansson’s easy confidence and technical command of the editing process, it’s easy to forget about the countless magazine features that have crowned her “The World’s Sexiest This” and “The Celebrity With The Nicest That.” Fan websites have paid leering tribute to every part of her body except possibly the rough pad of skin covering the heel of her left foot. When you meet Johansson in the middle of her workday, all that sideshow chatter in your head falls mute, replaced by the simple, elegant picture of a young artist with the sleeves of her sweater pushed up to her elbows.

Johansson is dressed casually in navy-blue slacks and a bright-orange T-shirt that has the word “Waverly” scrawled across the front in looping cursive. She wears a gauzy grey sweater over that. Her long blonde hair is down and her fingers routinely close upon a strand near her face, sliding down it before distractedly repeating the gesture. A small length of bent copper loops through the septum of her nose. Her demeanor is kind but focused. You’d expect this kind of sober intensity from someone wrapping up her first directorial effort. Scarlett Johansson’s game face just happens to be more comely than yours or mine.

Her debut album of Tom Waits covers comes out this month, but she’s already moved on to another project. Her sepia-toned short—starring a weathered-looking Kevin Bacon—will appear in the upcoming film New York, I Love You. This cinematic tribute to New York City serves as a follow-up to 2006’s Paris, Je T’aime, which showcased the work of such notable directors as Joel and Ethan Coen, Gus Van Sant and Alfonso Cuarón. While this may seem like heady company, Johansson is the very picture of unflappability. Asked what unexpected challenges she encountered while negotiating the transition from acting to directing, she matter-of-factly replies, “Nothing unexpected. It’s been a seamless transition. I’ve always been aware of what’s going on with the crew and how things were moving around, and you figure out the business of it because, as an actor, you’re involved so strongly with the studio and the producers. It’s not so dissimilar.”

This is how Johansson reminds you that she’s more experienced than her age suggests, that you’re talking to a seasoned professional who’s been working in the film industry for a decade and a half. Johansson landed her first role at the age of nine in Rob Reiner’s film North and continued acting in bit parts until her 1998 portrayal of a crippled girl in Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer drew her wider acclaim.

Maybe it was the uncharacteristically husky voice that initially made her a less obvious choice for mainstream Hollywood casting agents, but Johansson’s early starring roles—such as the sarcastically deadpan Rebecca in Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World—launched her career on a decidedly art-house trajectory. Then in 2003, her quietly wrenching performance opposite Bill Murray in Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation sealed the deal. Critics loved her. The movie-going public loved her. And, let’s be honest, the camera probably loved her most of all.

This is the pivotal moment at which you’d expect a gorgeous young starlet to leap aboard the Britney-Paris Express and ride it drunkenly down Melrose smack into the side of a parked car. But what you see in Johansson’s career is something remarkably different. Instead of spending all her time with Hot Young Hollywood, she’s actually gravitated toward middle-aged men who know firsthand what it takes to build a sturdy legacy.

So this is a story about an old soul residing in a young body, the incalculable value of life experience, intergenerational artistic bonds, actors imparting wisdom by simply doing good work, mentoring disguised as bullshitting, the humility to reach outside of yourself for answers, the uselessness of sex as an explanation for everything, the quest for substance, the joy of bringing new stories into being, and the exquisite prize of simple friendship. This is a story about dads and daughters who share no blood. This is a story about dads and daughters who share something more profoundly connective than blood.

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My Five Dads

Scarlett Johansson is one of Hollywood’s most accomplished young women. And she’d like to take this moment to honor a few good men.

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