The transition from child star to accomplished actor is a difficult one to make – and a shift that countless performers have failed to achieve – but Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation provided irrefutable evidence that Scarlett Johansson was here to stay.
Even though she was only 19 when the Academy Award-winning drama was released, Johansson had plenty of experience on the big screen, having debuted in Rob Reiner’s infamously terrible North before appearing in the Sean Connery thriller Just Cause, comedy sequel Home Alone 3, Robert Redford’s literary adaptation The Horse Whisperer, and creature feature Eight Legged Freaks.
Following Lost in Translation, though, Johansson would go on to become one of the biggest stars of her generation that’s notched a pair of Academy Award nominations, as well as being anointed one of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood through her decade-long ᴀssociation with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
However, it hasn’t been all plain-sailing, with several casting controversies placing her directly in the line of fire, one of which she managed to make a great deal worse before it got better. Having already experienced backlash and whitewashing accusations after being hired to headline blockbuster cyberpunk flop Ghost in the Shell, the announcement that Johansson would play the lead role in Rub & Tug opened the doors to even more criticism in 2018.
The biographical drama would have seen her playing Dante ‘Tex’ Gill, a transgender man who owned and operated a mᴀssage parlour and ran a prosтιтution ring during the 1970s and 1980s. Following the negative response to a cisgender actor being cast as a transgender character, the response Johansson offered Bustle only caused more outrage: “Tell them that they can be directed to Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Leto, and Felicity Huffman’s reps for comment”.
Continuing in her quest to repeatedly fail at reading the room, Johansson would defend her involvement in Rub & Tug by telling As If: “I should be able to play any person, or any tree, or any animal, because that’s my job and the requirements of my job”. Ultimately, the opposition grew so loud that she dropped out of the project altogether and eventually issued an apology.
Realising the error of her ways, Johansson admitted to Vanity Fair that “in hindsight, I mishandled that situation”. Conceding that she “wasn’t aware of that conversation”, the actor referred to herself as “uneducated” for the way she handled the furore and how being “kind of tone-deaf to something” impacted both her and the people she’d upset.
Upon her departure from Rub & Tug, Johansson said that as much as she “would have loved the opportunity to bring Dante’s story and transition to life”, she understood why the part should be played by a transgender performer, although as of yet the project has still to come to fruition.
