Scarlett Johansson At 41: Here Are 13 Defining Performances Beyond The MCU
Black Widow (Natasha Romanoff) remains Scarlett Johansson’s flagship career role, having portrayed the character in nine films since her MCU debut in 2010. Many fans still hope she returns to the role someday after her controversial exit, which is largely attributed to Disney’s bungling of Black Widow in 2021 and the subsequent legal battle with the actress.
Despite the dispute ending in a $40 million settlement in Johansson’s favor and an agreement for continued cooperation with Disney, Johansson was conspicuously left out of the widely publicized Avengers: Doomsday cast list and doesn’t seem to be in the running for Avengers: Secret Wars either.
That doesn’t mean she isn’t killing it outside of the Sacred Universe, though. Johansson successfully led the line in the reboot of Jurassic World with her lead role as Zora Bennett in Jurassic World Rebirth. Johansson will also partner with her MCU alum Chiwetel Ejiofor alongside Diane Lane and Jacobi Jupe in the upcoming Exorcist film, hopefully bringing another struggling franchise back to life. Her time in the MCU, therefore, overshadowed these iconic career roles.
Lucy (2014)
This wacky Luc Besson film was pretty much the precursor to what a well-executed Black Widow film could look like. The film features Johansson in the titular role as a student who accidentally ingests a drug that causes her to start using one hundred percent of her brain.
Johansson shines in the role of the badass human supercomputer, beating the bad guys while doing her best to simplify the complexity of human life as a whole. Besson’s ideas and writing were on point, although the script was shallow and nonsensical at best. Still, Johansson brought Black Widow energy to the set, giving the otherwise forgettable film a chance, hence its box office success.
Jojo Rabbit (2019)
Jojo Rabbit faced a fair share of backlash for introducing lighthearted humor around Nazism, but that didn’t prevent Johansson from getting an Oscar nomination for her performance.
Johansson plays Rosie Betzler, the secretly anti-Nazi mother of the main character Johannes ‘Jojo’ Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis), a ten-year-old Hitler Youth League member who becomes conflicted when he discovers that his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in the attic.
It is one of the rare occasions in which Johansson plays a mother figure, and she hardly puts a foot wrong. Her charm delivers the balance between comedy and sadness in the film as she gives the aura of both a warm, loving mother and a silent but determined rebel who doesn’t cower to Hitler’s ideals.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
Vicky Cristina Barcelona marked the peak of Johansson’s early-career collaboration with Woody Allen. Johansson embodies the film’s Bohemian half, playing Cristina, the more adventurous of the two American girls who fall in love with the same man (Javier Bardem) while spending their summer in Spain.
Though Penelope Cruz won the awards for the supporting role, Johansson’s performance is the real highlight of the rom-com, which has since become a cult classic. She gives Cristina a brave face and a delicate touch, a trait that has defined most of her career outside the MCU.
Asteroid City (2023)
Wes Anderson’s unique filmmaking style, marked by bright colors and symmetrical frames, has redefined auteur cinema. After getting a voice acting role in his 2018 stop motion Isle of Dogs, and a cameo in The French Dispatch in 2021, Johansson finally scored a bigger live-action role in his hit 2023 film, Asteroid City.
Set in the 1950s, the quirky sci-fi comedy follows a series of interesting alien sightings in the titular city during a youth astronomy convention. Johansson’s character, Midge Campbell, is the film’s center of attraction, a stunning actress and mother to one of the youths at the convention. She becomes the love interest of the main character, Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman).
Under the Skin (2013)
Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin hardly competes with most of Scarlett Johansson’s best films, but it features what is essentially her best performance as a villain. The film follows Johansson’s character, an extraterrestrial femme fatale, as she lures unsuspecting men into her van in Scotland.
The film demanded a peculiar kind of performance from Johansson because the alien entity she plays, devoid of empathy and any form of humanity, is different from any role she had played in the past. Johansson was still up to the task, offering a commanding presence while still expressing the dread of the villain as intended. Eventually, she still connects with viewers and finds a way to humanize the entity, a talent few could portray.
Match Point (2005)
Match Point was Scarlett Johansson’s first collaboration with Woody Allen. Her captivating performance as Nola, the aspiring actress who has an affair with a married man, pretty much put her on the map as a rom-com legend. She steals the stage from the lead character, using both her looks and talent to turn Nola into the film’s central figure.
Like most of her early career roles, the script doesn’t do her character much justice, leaving Johansson’s electric performance to do the heavy lifting. The film was a commercial success in the end, and a stepping stone for Johansson to bigger things.
Her (2013)
Johansson’s voice acting is just as commanding as her live-action appearances, and her delivery of the lovely voice of Samantha in Spike Jonze’s Sci-fi comedy is memorable. Her is set in a futuristic LA where Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), a lonely letter writer, gets romantically attached to his advanced AI Operating System called Samantha.
Her voice gives the film all the life it needs, outplaying most of the live performances. She presents Samantha as a witty and multilayered character with a compelling human connection that transcends the film’s melancholic atmosphere, making it surprisingly addictive.
Don Jon (2013)
In his directorial debut, Joseph Gordon-Levitt also starred in his own film as Jon Mortello, Jr., a promiscuous bartender who takes most women for granted, until he meets the one girl who just won’t fall for his charm.
The girl is Barbara Sugarman (Johansson), a brilliant, unapologetic, and controlling Jersey girl who forces Jon to turn his life around and see sex and romance from a whole new perspective.
Don Jon is one of the few films where Johansson expresses the control and emotional independence close to what she does with Black Widow in the MCU, making her the most rewatchable half of the film.
The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)
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Johansson’s performance as Mary Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl is one of the most underrated performances in her career. Mary is the mistress of Eric Bana’s King Henry VIII and the elder sister of Henry’s future queen, Anne Boleyn (Natalie Portman). The film’s build-up to the tragic events leading to Anne’s death is a little muted but still gripping.
However, amid all the confusion and sexual tension, Johansson portrays the perfect Mary, perfecting both the betrayed woman, whose dreams are crushed by those she loves, and the protective big sister and mother figure. Johansson and Portman actually deliver one of the best ever female-led partnerships of their joint careers in the film. Johansson’s performance turns Mary into the sensible half of Henry VIII’s court, a side of the story that is rarely mentioned in conventional sources.
The Prestige (2006)
The Prestige is Christopher Nolan’s reimagination of Christopher Priest’s 1995 novel, which has become a cult classic over the years, mostly because of electric performances by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale. Jackman and Bale portray Robert Angier and Alfred Borden, two feuding magicians in Victorian London, respectively.
Scarlett Johansson’s character, Olivia Wenscombe, starts as Angier’s assistant, who is later sent to seduce and spy on Borden, but becomes his mistress instead. The character is largely intended as a hypersexualized pawn for the two protagonists, but Johansson effortlessly turns her into the film’s third protagonist in her own right.
Marriage Story (2019)
Noah Baumbach’s gripping script saw an otherwise simple divorce story turn into one of the best films of 2019. The film follows the disintegration of Nicole (Johansson) and Charlie Barber’s (Adam Driver) marriage as it turns into a dirty divorce battle despite the two still caring deeply for each other and their son.
Marriage Story has no villains, just the exposition of the brutal reality that couples face when they separate. While Baumbach’s writing leans slightly in Charlie’s favor, with Driver delivering a convincing performance, Johansson is so compelling that she makes a strong case for Nicole.
Jurassic World Rebirth (2025)
Jurassic World Rebirth follows a high-stakes covert mission to extract vital DNA material from prehistoric creatures left untamed on an island after a scientific mishap. Johansson’s character, Zora Bennett, was the highlight of this $869M thriller that saw Jurassic World soaring back to life at the box office.
Johansson perfectly embodies the character, portraying another gritty covert operative with the touch of a veteran, but also with a softer touch than Black Widow. The film isn’t necessarily revolutionary, but a vastly talented cast, with outstanding individual performances, garnered it sufficient traction to become one of the highest-grossing films of 2025.
Lost in Translation (2003)
Sofia Coppola wrote Lost in Translation with Bill Murray in mind, and while he aced his part, Johansson’s was the welcome surprise that turned the film into a masterpiece. The film follows the unlikely friendship between Bob Harris (Murray) and Charlotte (Johansson) after they meet at a hotel in Tokyo.
Johansson totally nails Charlotte, a young Yale graduate forced to accompany her distant husband to Tokyo. Despite being young and fairly inexperienced at the time, Johansson matches Murray’s energy as he plays a fading movie star struggling with a midlife crisis. Their partnership created what is essentially one of the best onscreen friendships ever.
