Scarlett Johansson on becoming a skin care mogul

You're looking fetching as usual. It's because of you my son can't walk properly and has a messed up face. It's the money issue on Sunday morning. Here again is Jane Pauley. She's been box office gold for decades now. But with her new business taking off, Scarlett Johansson finally has some real skin in the game. As Tracy Smith explains. On screen she's always been flawless. Did anyone ever tell you, you play a very aggressive game? In every role. That's all it's been about, bringing everybody back. And in every galaxy. But away from the flattering lights and makeup, Scarlett Johansson was always bothered by the way she looked. I felt like I had to wake up and like cover up all this acne before I got to work. Which is like, it's a lot of effort. It weighs on you. Where were you in your career when you had that kind of aha moment? Like, let me stop doing this to myself. So it was about, yeah, like 11, 12 years ago. Yeah, in the middle of my career. But I mean, I'd been dealing with my own skin struggles since I was 12. And on the set of The Horse Whisperer, I remember the makeup artist being like, Oh, you've got, you know, like Mount Vesuvius on your forehead. And I was like, ah! You know, it's like a preteen, adolescent, you're just so self-conscious. And then you have a makeup artist pointing it out. And, you know, you're working on set and like, people are trying to kind of light around it. And, you know, that's, it's just awful. I am not that hungry. I might eat later. For now, I'm just going to chew on these grapes. And so, after coping with acne and breakouts for years, and basically trying everything, she started her own skincare line. The outset is the ease of simplicity. It's called The Outset, a line of products designed for people with sensitive skin, like hers. I use this day cream underneath my makeup, and it soaks right in. To hear her tell it, there's an outset product for everyone, and every skin condition, like melasma. Do you use this? You don't have any dark spots. I actually do have melasma. I started getting melasma about 10 years ago. And that's usually like dark around here? It can be anywhere, but it can be here, like up here, sunspots, all of that. I don't see it though. I know this, I'm telling you, this product is fantastic. Seems Scarlett Johansson would have had a great career in sales if she didn't have that other job. I don't know that I can do anything. She was just 13 when she starred opposite Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer. Wait, you have a problem with that? Isn't it like obvious? But she quickly grew into the perfect Ingenue, an image she says she found hard to break out of. Were you offered the same sort of parts over and over? Yeah, you would get really pigeonholed and offered the same. It would be the other woman or the side piece, the bombshell. That was an archetype I think there was just a lot of when I was that age. Did you ever worry that, oh, if I don't take this job, maybe this will be the last offer? Yeah, oh my gosh, forever. I felt that way for so long. Every actor feels like that because it is so competitive. And I think once you do have the spotlight, you want to keep it on you. That's the instinct, I think, for a young actor or any actor. Now that I've got everyone's attention, I have to kind of keep their attention. Beatrice says to be a woman, but why did she be a woman? If I was a wife, I'd make a man happy instead of going at him all the time. But Johansson chose roles like her Tony-winning Broadway turn in A View from the Bridge that broke the bombshell barrier. And now, as an established star whose films have raked in an astonishing $15 billion, she can take aim at other goals, like building a business for the ages. Are you obsessive? Yeah, I think so, in a good way. Actually, in a way that serves me at the outset. Probably in other areas of my life, not as much, but yeah. Welcome to Weekend Update. I'm Michael Che. I'm Colin Jost. Johansson's husband, Saturday Night Live star Colin Jost, has been involved in his wife's business from the early days. Maybe drafted is more like it. We just have to leave this on for a good, I don't know, ten minutes. Do you have ten minutes, is fair? Ten hours. So this is clay? Um, this is blue clay. Blue clay. Is that like a good kind of clay? It's a great kind of clay. Oh, good. Colin has been, is it fair to say, a guinea pig for some of these products? He actually has been a guinea pig. My skincare guinea pig. I remember we had a product that had, it was like a face mask that had this kind of like a tingling sort of sensation, and I forgot to tell him about that part of it. Yeah, I think he thought that I had basically given him some sort of like, I don't know, that he was having an allergic reaction to the product. What did he say? He was like, it's burning, it's burning. Like, is it supposed to be doing this? I was like, oh yeah, forgot to tell you about that. Yeah, let's use some cool washcloths and it'll go away. At 41, Johansson's racked up enough acclaim for someone twice her age. First of all, I love my mother. She was a wonderful mother. Just repeating what you told me. Secondly, how dare you compare my mother to my mother? I may be like my father. Including Oscar nods for two different movies the same year. Marriage Story. We must celebrate it. We have to dance to show God we are grateful to be alive. And Jojo Rabbit. You were nominated for two Oscars the same year. You've won a Tony. You have this thriving business. Do you allow yourself to say, hey, nice, Scarlett? I'm getting better at it, I think. But I, yeah, it's hard for me to have perspective right now. I think maybe because I'm in the thick of all of it. But I'd like to get better at, you know, I don't know, patting myself on the back. It's a good habit to have. I don't know that that's, like, ingrained in me as a person. So it's probably something I have to, like, learn how to do more of, yeah. After all, as a movie star, mother of two, and now budding skincare mogul, Scarlett Johansson is used to playing multiple roles. And she's wise enough not to let any of them define her. I'm sure you've talked about work-life balance. Do you think there is such a thing? Have you achieved that? No. I think actually admitting that there is no work-life balance is the first step to kind of getting there in a way. Because it's just not, it's not possible. There's always something that is, you know, there's a deficit in some area. I've learned to be more kind to myself in that way. Like, you can't do all of these things all the time. And so, you know, there's just, like, is it good enough? Yeah, good enough.