Lost in Translation - Interview with Scarlett Johansson (2003)

Scarlett Johansson is here. She is a very, very talented actress. She has two new films, Lost in Translation is already in theaters. It stars Bill Murray and is directed by Sofia Coppola. Her other film is A Girl with a Pearl Earring. It is an adaptation of the best-selling novel by Tracy Chevalier. And here is the trailer for the film. Colin Firth. Scarlett Johansson. Tom Wilkinson. In the mystery behind the masterpiece. A Girl with a Pearl Earring. He looked inside me. Pleased to welcome Scarlett Johansson to this table for the very first time. Welcome. Why, thank you. It's great to see you. Now look at this. This is the New York Times in the arts section. Smoldering Daughter of Delph, which was where Vermeer painted. This is the painting and this is you. That's right. What do you think? I think it's pretty good, actually. Pretty good. You are 19 now. You just had a birthday. I just had a birthday. How long have you wanted to act? Has this been a lifelong dream? I have been, well, I've been acting since I was 8 years old. And I don't know. I was a big ham, I suppose. I was one of those kids that used to sing and dance and run around. I wanted to be Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis. I wanted to be Rosalind Russell in Angie Mame. I wanted to be in movies. I wanted to sing and dance. Did you early on have the confidence that you could do it? I'd say I was a pretty confident little girl. Yeah, certainly. I used to make everybody pay to come and see my little shows that I put on. What would you charge them? I don't know. A dollar. I was hustling at the time. Your mother played a significant role. Oh, yeah. She still does. She's your manager? My manager. We've used every resource that I've collected from being in this business since the age of 8 to try to develop films and get projects that we've been coddling made. So she remains hugely in my life. It's great if it works out, isn't it? Yeah. It's awful when it doesn't. I know. It's exactly that. Because if it works out, you trust them. You know they'll be protective of you. You know they want your best interest. If it's awful, they're always driving you from their ambitions, not from yours. And it's ugly and not fun. Very ugly. I've witnessed a lot of that, you know, being a little girl and pounding the pavement with my mom. And it's a very... I think that it's very... There's a lot of conflict between what kids want to do and, you know, what their parents envision for them. And it's a scary kind of thing. And critics praise you a lot. I mean, both of these performances are very good and you're getting huge notices. And you know that, so there's no need not to appreciate that. How did you get this good? What's the... Was it a lot of just working all the time? Was it very good teachers at important moments? Was it good advice and working with great talent that helped you? All of that plus. You know, it's hard when you're presented with something, you know, how'd you get this good? You know, because for me, I think... I try to make the question better, but that's the best I can do. It's all right. It's not too bad. You know, I'm the self-deprecating actor that, you know, goes, oh, woe is me, I'm so awful. Oh, shucks, no. Please keep it coming. But I posit that by the fact that critics said this, not you. Yeah, I guess I, you know, I constantly struggle with the stuff I do. I still see scenes in films that I've done and go, God, why did I make that choice? Or why did they use that take? You know, what's wrong with the intonation in my voice and all of that? Do you sense that there's this very steep learning curve that you continue to grow on? In other words, at every step, you're getting better. You can feel it because of, I mean... I think that it's interesting that the more films that you make that are successful, it seems, the more there's a certain pressure on you to keep making great films and to keep being, you know, fantastic in them. That's a sort of scary thing. On the other hand, when you're just starting out, you want to be amazing and you want to get noticed and it's a certain drive that you have. I think that there's a certain jaded quality that comes with success and recognition. So, for me, of course I'm constantly learning. Every experience I have, working on and off set. But, you know, I constantly struggle with whether I am becoming jaded or whether I'm able to step outside of what I'm doing and kind of have a look in. I think that tunnel of vision gets narrower and narrower, you know, the more and more you work. I recently talked to Sean Penn about, he's got two new movies out, as you know, Mystic River on the one hand and 21 Grams, and they're both brilliant performances. And in the conversation, he just said, this was for 60 Minutes 2, he said, you know, it's just at 45, it's just come together. And he's had a lot of rather remarkable performances before. He's been nominated a bunch of times. But he feels like something has sort of come together. You know, I think he feels stronger about his work than he's ever done in the performances. I think it's something that happens to you as you get older. I think you go through periods when you doubt very much what you're doing. Or should be doing it or should be doing something else. Right, right. And other periods, I suppose, when you, you know, when everything just seems to be, when you seem to know yourself really well. And I think with a job, you know, being an actor, it's a very strange sort of profession. You're manipulating your emotions all the time. It's very unnatural, going against the grain. And I think that it's something that the more you know about yourself, and it seems to be the more you grow, you know, and the older you get, you're able to have more things to sort of pick and choose from and know yourself, you know, better and better, I suppose. Any similarities between these two women, Charlotte and Greek? I think they're very different characters. I think that they're both, you know, unquestionably observant. But for me, Greek, you feel as though she could conquer anything. You know, she could survive anything. The plague, the household. Greek being, if you haven't seen the movie, is the model for Vermeer. That's right. And Charlotte, I think, needs Bob Harris, who's played by Bill Murray in Lost in Translation. She needs him to help her get through her, you know, 24-year-old midlife crisis. Yeah, meaning the husband's always on the go, and she doesn't quite know where she fits in and what she's doing. And all of a sudden there's this guy at a hotel who's at the tail end of a career, so to speak. And all of a sudden they find each other. They find each other, and they somehow, by the end of the film, although it's incredibly sad and bittersweet, and I still get very upset every time I see the ending because it makes me sad. I don't know why. But you feel as though they'll be okay somehow, that they found some familiarity in each other. And I think that... You mean they helped, whatever happens to them, they will both benefit from the relationship that took place at a hotel in Tokyo. And they're somehow forever changed by it, I think. How was she changed, do you think? I think that she was inspired to be enthusiastic, and she is inspired by this romance. I think that the idea... She's feeling so sort of shallow in the beginning of this film. And I think the idea that two people can meet in a hotel, in a foreign place, in completely different places in their lives, and have a deep, deep love for one another, and a certain understanding, and just knowing that there's somebody out there that's just going through the same thing, inspires her to be able to kind of move away from it. And it's very beautiful. Was one more difficult than the other to perform? There's not a lot of dialogue. Not in either one, really. Girl with a Pearl Earring was one of the easiest jobs I've ever had. Because? I mean, it was physically draining, and I was cold, and I was, you know, tired and overworked. But it was so incredibly fulfilling, and just being on the set, being in that lighting, being in those costumes with Colin and, you know, with Tom, and having such an incredible ensemble around me, it just felt every day, I felt like I was coming back with a lot, you know, a full stomach. Being on Lost in Translation, it was so kind of fast and so jerky that I felt very alienated, and it was more difficult for me to cope with being on that production. So I'd say that was, it was more difficult that, in some way. This is Girl with a Pearl Earring, in which Vermeer, played by Firth, to describe the colors she sees in clouds to him. Here it is. You look like a peeled egg. That's what Colin would say. She looks like a peeled egg. I look like a peeled egg in that, but he's a hairy mongrel. He's a hairy mongrel and you're a peeled egg? Yes. You know, it's a huge comedy doing drama and people have rarely realized. How did you get up for this? What did you do? Did you do anything? Did you go try to get inside of understanding Vermeer and the paintings? And did you read the novel? Did you do what? None of the above. Did you read the novel? I did not read the novel, no. But you had the script, so it didn't matter. I had the script. I didn't want the novel. But did you read the script? What script? What are we doing here? Momentary lapse of... But I just... Yeah, I didn't read the book. I don't know. Some actors may have studied it. I didn't want it. It's written in first person. I just didn't want the first person narrative. I thought it would be harmful. I read it afterwards, which was kind of bizarre, because I had it all cast in my mind. You know, Tom Wilkinson playing the Ben Ryan character. When you read the book, you visualized people. The cast that you had worked with. That's right. Although I couldn't quite get into the first person of my own character, because I had had my own experiences with longing and devastation and heartbreak, and it was difficult for me to put myself in the shoes of that girl. I don't know. Roll tape. Here's another scene from Girl with a Pearl Earring. Can you imagine yourself in such finery, Greet? She loved it, you know. Lace and satin pressed tight against her plump little bobbies. The silk heavy on her thighs. The gentleman watching. Now, why is he obsessed with her? Oh. Other than the obvious. He's so awful. I think it is the obvious, exactly that. He is a lecherous, lascivious, awful man. And the funny thing about Tom is that he, you know, we did this, there's an awful scene in the film where he's trying to rape my character, and it's really scary, and I'm thinking, Get away from me. I don't want you anywhere near me. And we have this huge struggle, you know, and at the end he says, You better not tell anybody. And then they say, Cut. And he'd go, Oh, are you okay? Did I hurt your arm? He's Tom. How am I supposed to do another take of this? You can't be nice. Don't be nice to me. Yeah, he's fabulous. Now, these are two stories in which we'll see Lost in Translation in a moment. These are two stories. Sophia has been here. Two stories in which there is an older man and a younger woman. Yes. Yes, that is true. Did you learn anything about relationships between younger men and older women? Yes. Younger women and older men? Yes, I learned that they're quite complicated, and, you know, it's funny because, for me, I would never, I would never, you know, I'm very open-minded, and I would never nix any kind of thing, but I think that in both of these I found that the characters are in such different places in their lives that it's exactly why neither of them work. You know, I mean, I think if Vermeer had come to greet and had caressed her, she would say, take me, I'm yours, you know, but he doesn't do that. He has a family, and you look at Bill's character, and he's in such a different place and could never taint that relationship. Yeah, they didn't come on as seducers. Yeah. If they'd come on as seducers, it might have been a different thing. Not like Tom Wilkinson. He's more than a seducer. All right, well, let me see now a scene from Lost in Translation just to give the audience a sense of how remarkably different these performances are in the context of what we have just said. This is where Bob Harris, played by Bill Murray, he's in Tokyo to do some commercials, and this is where he meets Charlotte. So, you having a nice time? Can you keep a secret? I'm trying to organize a prison break. I'm looking for, like, an accomplice. We'd have to first get out of this bar, then the hotel, then the city, and then the country. Are you in or are you out? I'm in. How is he to work with? Oh, he's so good. He's so fabulous in that. He comes prepared. Yeah, he is so prepared when he knows himself so well. He's been doing it for so long, and he brings so much to the table that it was really easy for me. When the cameras were rolling, everything just sort of came together. We didn't have to discuss. We didn't have to do so much rehearsal. It just kind of was spontaneous and easy. I don't know. But he's also aloof and distant at times. Yeah. I mean, I think that I've heard oftentimes comedians can be that way. I think that in his... Comedic actors. Yeah, comedic actors. I mean, in a sense, they're sort of self-deprecating in a way. They're taking so much sort of out of themselves, sort of deflating themselves at times, I think. And I think that can... I think that sometimes they're on, and sometimes they're feeling very private. And I think both of us felt we're so exhausted from this schedule that all we wanted to do on our off time was just eat McDonald's and stare at the floor. Must be great, too, because of these performances, but others. There's been building. The better you are, the better roles you get, the better roles you'll be offered. Yes. I mean, I just saw Coal Mountain, and I thought both Nicole... It's a movie as good as Jude is. I mean, it is really Nicole's movie, and it is Renee's movie. I mean, it's for my money. I mean, this is extraordinary, as good as Jude is. And you think Nicole, those two people, must be getting... Must be the best of their times, too, because they've grown to a place where they'll have such creative opportunities, such opportunities to stretch and grow in parts, because the best directors and the best writers and the best producers want to work with them. And you've arrived at that point, I suspect, especially because of age, you get a choice of films that are age-relevant. Well, I mean, that's what's... Because people often ask me, well, what are the perks of being in this kind of position, the it girl, whatever that means? Nobody can tell me who the it girl was of 2002, so that kind of worries me. Exactly. I don't know if that's exactly right. Whoever she was, she ain't. Not anymore. She once was an it girl. You're right. She's a former it girl. They're in seclusion in Rome. My God, it's me in here. I don't want to be the it girl because I don't want to be yesterday. Don't say that. Don't say it girl. I don't want to know that I've arrived. Exactly right. So none of that's happened to you. So what is it? Well, I guess... It's not a perk. It is a what? What are the perks of this job? That's what people are saying. And I say, well, of course there's wonderful perks like being shuffled around and having people take care of you and all that. People seem to think that actors are invalids and can't open a car door for themselves. You can open a car door by yourself. I learned just about last year around this time. This is before you were the it girl. That's right. Now I'm worried I'm going to lose it. So what is it? It's not that. It is the ability to go into a studio and say, look, I know this part is written for a 29-year-old person. Okay, I can't quite make it to 29. Can we make the part younger? Do you think we could develop this project that I've had in my mind forever? It's being able to take projects like Marjorie Morningstar, which is a project that I read the book and called my mom and said, I am Marjorie, and she said, that's what I thought. So have you optioned that or done something with it? Yeah, it's over at Universal Focus and we're working on that now. Who played the original Marjorie? Natalie Wood. That kind of thing is something that just keeps... You're always afraid you're going to lose it, but while the wheel is in motion, you've just got to keep it turning. And that's an incredible feeling. I'm unbelievably fortunate to be able to do that as a 19-year-old person, as an actor, as a working actor who gets paid to do what they love, and go into a studio and say, look, I have these ideas. Will you take me seriously, creatively, please? Did that happen with Charlotte? Was that a 29-year-old who became a 24-year-old? I think that everybody was sort of... I think Sophia said, Charlotte Johansson, and everybody said, well... She's too young. Yeah, she's too young, and she said, she's not too young. And she really was sort of my... She was really there for me from the get-go, and I think really fought for me and didn't have to fight too hard. I think she just said, Charlotte, she's old enough. Okay, let's get Bill now. What is it you think you need to learn? Do I think I need to learn? No, what is it you think you need to learn? Where do you think you need to grow at the tender age of 19? What needs work on? I know that I should probably be more patient than I am with things, but I don't like to be patient, because I feel like you should strike while the iron's hot and get things going. I mean, nobody advocates for you like you do for yourself. You kind of get left by the wayside unless you keep pushing forward. But I'm sure there's times when I am impatient, and I guess that's something that is a virtue that I'll just try to keep reminding myself of and trying to remind myself to be compassionate and those things. There's a sense of urgency. Yeah, I'm always... The moment is red hot. That's why all my dreams, I'm sure if you analyze them, are filled with anxiety all the time, because even in my regular life, I may be very relaxed, but apparently in my subconscious, I'm dying to get things done. What kind of dreams do you have? Now that we're shooting in Italy, I've had the most bizarre dreams ever. I had a dream the other night that I walked into my new apartment and it was huge, and I ran around going, it's mine, it's all mine. I don't know what that means. That wasn't exactly an anxiety dream. That was just bizarre. I'm always losing things. I can never get to where I need to go. I can never fly when something's chasing me. I have all those dreams where I know I can fly if I could just get off the ground. These stupid wings, they won't go, and I have all those awful anxiety dreams. Oh dear. Thank you for coming. Thank you for having me. You're quite wonderful. It's a delight to have been much success with all of this. It's been a pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. See you next time.