My Five Dads

1. Bill Murray

Watching Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation (the story of a middle-aged actor shooting a whiskey commercial in Tokyo who strikes up an intense relationship with a younger woman staying in the same hotel), it’s easy to idealize the off-screen connection between the film’s lead actors. But Johansson stresses that sometimes the magic you see blossom between two characters is simply the result of hard work and preparation.

“It was difficult working on that film. First of all, I was 17, and I was going through my own shit—graduating from high school and figuring out what I wanted, what was important to me, finding my independence. I was in Tokyo, which was totally foreign to me, and I was working insane hours. It wasn’t like Bill and I had so much in common that we could have this great personal relationship. We were at totally different stages in our lives, and I don’t think he was necessarily so fascinated by what I was going through. But we were fortunate that we had a lot of chemistry between us.”

Even though the actors’ personal relationship didn’t stretch far beyond the word “cut” (“I don’t even remember what I did off screen, I was so jetlagged,” Johansson sighs), sometimes your coworkers can teach you about life simply by example. Johansson learned the importance of vulnerability in the acting process, and about finding the nerve to pour something intimate into each character.

“Bill brings an integrity to the work because he really personalizes it,” she says. “He shared his own kind of wisdom in that film. Some of his lines were things he had written, very poignant moments like when he says, ‘You get older, you have kids….’ He’s reminiscing with this character. I think a lot of people related to his character because it was really coming from him.

“For me, it was more of a stretch—the character was going through a phase of her life that I had not yet gone through, which was being a young woman completely independent of her family. At that time, my mom was still coming with me to work. She legally had to be there—thank God she was there! I think everybody wished they had their mom with them on that job. But I figured it out somehow. I think a lot of it was just responding to Bill. I guess, in a way, I felt very transient. I related to that.”

Even though the relationship between Bob and Charlotte in the film had a powerful romantic tension pulsing around its edges, the emotional impact of their bond was less about sex and more about two humans blessing one another with human presence in a world where busyness and technology conspire to alienate people from meaningful connection. For all its other insights into relational dynamics, Coppola’s script exhibited astounding prescience in terms of Johansson’s career future. Soon, an older man would become an important creative ally and friend.

2. Woody Allen

"I don’t know why relationships between men and women are always pigeon-holed into being some kind of push-and-pull for sexual power. I’m always kind of weirded out when I’m interviewed by people who say, ‘Gosh! Woody must be in love with you.’ It’s like, ‘fucking expand your mind.’ We have a great friendship between us and I have such a fondness for him as a person. I can appreciate his quirks.”

Johansson recently wrapped shooting in Madrid for Vicky Cristina Barcelona, her third picture with Allen, following 2006’s Scoop and 2005’s Match Point. It didn’t take the media long to seize on the notion that Johansson must be Allen’s new muse. The reality is simultaneously less sensational and considerably more meaningful. The two get on famously, and Johansson has drawn tremendous inspiration from Allen’s relentless creative drive.

“He’s very modern in his way of thinking and has a great enthusiasm, a hunger for what he does. I think part of that is nervousness about the passing of time, a sense that this life is not enough. He’s just so full of ideas, and it’s inspiring to see somebody who’s in the autumn of his life but hasn’t lost any of the passion for storytelling. We talk a lot about relationships, whether it’s people that are together intimately, or friends, whatever—how people are with one another. He’s fascinated by human nature, and so am I.”

It’s that zeal for storytelling that’s prompted Johansson to climb into the director’s chair herself. Though her debut short has very little dialogue, you can already sense her fascination with the inner life of the characters and the piece’s mood as shaded by the tenor of each actor’s performance. Johansson’s directorial style is evocative in what it leaves to the imagination—from the way Kevin Bacon fidgets with his fedora and locks/unlocks/relocks his apartment door with a shaky hand to the insane cackling of the corner-store clerk; to Saul Williams’ confrontational spoken-word poetry as he stalks closer to Bacon on a train to Coney Island. Though she doesn’t intend the stylistic thumbprint of her directorial work to parrot Allen’s, she’s taken other lessons from the 73-year-old auteur.

“He’s not precious about stuff, which I think is important, especially when you’re working with such a large group of people, and actors that are going to come in with their own ideas. You can’t be too nit-picky precious about phrasing. You’ll tell him, ‘This phrasing isn’t coming out the right way,’ and he’ll be like, ‘As long as you have the same idea, just put it into your own words.’ I think it’s important to give an actor that kind of flexibility.

“For instance, in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, there’s this line where I say, ‘You went through my suitcase,’ but the original line was ‘You went through my valise.’ Nobody would say ‘You went through my valise,” but Woody would say that! I told him, ‘You can’t say “valise” because nobody knows what that means.’ And Woody was like, ‘Really? What do you call it?’ And I was like, ‘It’s a suitcase!’”