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O NE of Hollywood’s top-grossing actresses Scarlett Johansson will walk the red carpet twice at Cannes for her directorial debut with Eleanor the Great and for Wes Anderson’s film The Phoenician Scheme , which premiered earlier this week. Here are five things to know about the teen-star-turned Hollywood-A-Lister: Starlet Scarlett When Johansson was born into a Jewish family in Manhattan in 1984, early signs suggested stardom was ahead. Her parents named her after Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind , and at a young age she was drawn to tap dance and theatre. Barely into double-digits, she made her screen debut – and soon after, Robert Redford cast her in The Horse Whisperer for her first major role. Then, at 20, she hit the big time with Sofia Coppola’s art-house classic Lost in Translation . In the film, which unfolds in the alienating surroundings of a Tokyo hotel, Johansson manages to touch the heart of an ever-sardonic Bill Murray as well as charming spectators and critics worldwide. Cha-ching! Over the next decades, Johansson has starred in a string of hits and top directors have queued up to cast her – from Wes Anderson and the Coen brothers to Jonathan Glazer and Christopher Nolan. Catapulting her into movie stratosphere, she joined the Marvel universe as the indomitable Black Widow in 2010 and made eight films with the franchise. During this collaboration she topped the Forbes list of highest paid actresses and featured in hits including Avengers: Infinity War (2018), one of the top-10 highest grossing films of all time, according to IMDB Pro. Other missions But Johansson the box-office megastar has also missed out on, or sidestepped, plenty of big roles. There was a potential Mission Impossible movie but this was shelved, officially due to scheduling clashes. She did not land the lead in Les Miserables , which went to Anne Hathaway, who won an Oscar for it, nor did she get Lisbeth Salander in Millennium . But, she was plenty busy, often starring in lower budget films that wowed critics and audiences. These included a stand-out performance as an alien in

Johansson has championed various social and film-related issues such as gender

inequality. – ALL PICS FROM AFP

Get to know actress-director Scarlett Johansson

That voice It is unmistakable and Johansson has capitalised on it, though sometimes with unwanted repercussions. She brought her deep, distinctive vocals to the voice of Samantha in Her (2013) by Spike Jonze, about an artificial intelligence system Joaquin Phoenix falls for. But in May last year, Johansson accused tech firm OpenAI of using her voice in their own generative AI ChatGPT, which responded by modifying its tone. She can also be heard in hit

animations, including The Jungle Book and the two Sing films. Johansson has also released two albums Anywhere I Lay My Head in 2008 and a year later Break Up . They did not rock the music world, but reviewing the inaugural album, Pitchfork called it a “curio” while praising the “wide textural range” of Johansson’s voice. Outspoken darling Never reluctant to speak her mind, Johansson has been outspoken on various social and film-related issues.

multi-generational trauma among women on a farm. “To have Sound of Falling heard on the world stage, that is fantastic,” she said. Although she ruled out writing her own script, she did reveal she frequently wakes up during the night to write. “It is a very ripe time for things to happen because you are in that slightly removed state from reality. “I wake up and I will write something, be it a dream, be it something that is circulating in my mind,” she said. – AFP She has supported victims of harassment, pushed for gender equal pay and spotlighted the impact of streaming on theatrical releases. She is also willing to take more controversial stances, not least in defending Woody Allen, who has cast her in three films, when much of Hollywood has shunned him over a long-running sexual assault scandal. “I love Woody. I believe him, and I would work with him any time,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2019. – AFP

o Five facts about Hollywood’s darling

Jonathan Glazer’s remarkable Under the Skin (2013), shot in wintery backstreets, abandoned houses and seedy minivans. So far, she has not won an Oscar, but she was nominated for Best Actress and Supporting Actress in 2020 for her roles in indie favourites Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit.

Nicole Kidman laments ‘incredibly low’ women moviemakers AUSTRALIAN megastar Nicole Kidman lamented the “incredibly low” number of hit films made by women directors, and revealed she often wakes up at 3am to do her own personal writing. saying then that there was “such a disparity in terms of the choices”. “You would go, ‘OK, could a woman direct this?’ There just was not a number of names that you could consider,” she said.

The Oscar-winning actress confirmed she had worked with 27 female directors since her pledge eight years ago. Only seven of the 22 films in the main competition in Cannes this year are directed by women. But Kidman heaped praise on an early critics’ favourite, Mascha Schilinski’s The Sound of Falling , a German-language drama about

Despite her efforts backing and mentoring women-led projects, the number of women-made films among the highest-grossing films “is incredibly low”, she said as she received a Kering Women in Motion award at the Cannes film festival. Kidman pledged in 2017 to work with a woman director at least once every 18 months,

Kidman has pledged in 2017 to work with a woman

director at least once every 18 months.