Scarlett Johansson's Best Roles on Her Path to Jurassic World Rebirth
Originally appeared on E! Online
Scarlett Johansson's star power has never been lost in translation.
So when it was time to cast a believable badass to outrun, out-swim and outsmart a coterie of eerily evolved dinosaurs in Jurassic World Rebirth, it had to be her.
Yet the actress—who's proved over the course of her 30-year career that she can deftly handle any screen challenge, from superhero stunts to playing an A.I. operating system—insists she's the lucky one.
"I've been trying to get into a Jurassic movie for, I don't know, 15 years or something,' Johansson told The Hollywood Reporter in May during the Cannes Film Festival, where her feature directorial debut Eleanor the Great was screening. 'I was so stoked that it all came together.'
Seemingly she could have had her pick of parts in the decade-old Jurassic World franchise, but being in demand does have its downside: There's only so much time every year for a movie star mom of two—Johansson shares son Cosmo, 3, with husband Colin Jost and daughter Rose, 10, with ex-husband Romain Dauriac—to commit to a big-budget action movie.
But, happily, life finds a way.
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"When I first heard that there was a new Jurassic movie coming, that it was written with a female lead who was the age that I could fit into, and that it was happening during a time period that I could shoot," Johansson explained, "it was particularly surreal."
The New York native's swift rise to superstardom also had the tinge of the surreal about it.
Johansson showed her gravitas as a child actress in touching fare like Manny & Lo and The Horse Whisperer before breaking out in Sofia Coppola's revered 2004 indie dramedy Lost in Translation, joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Black Widow and scoring dual Oscar nominations in 2021 for Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit.
And now the 40-year-old is finally part of the world she first experienced as a kid, watching velociraptors learn how to open doors from her seat in a theater showing Jurassic Park.
Whether or not Johansson laid it on a little thick for director Steven Spielberg, who remains an executive producer on the Jurassic World franchise, is beside the point. As she noted to THR, "I could've played it cooler and maybe I wouldn't have gotten it."
See where Johansson's apparent dream role in Jurassic World Rebirth, in theaters July 2, fits in among the most memorable roles of her career:
The Horse WhispererMatch PointScoop
The PrestigeVicky Cristina BarcelonaThe SpiritHe's Just Not That Into You
We Bought a ZooSing
Avengers: EndgameMarriage StoryJojo RabbitBlack WidowAsteroid CityJurassic World Rebirth(E! and Universal Pictures are both members of the NBCUniversal family.)
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