Controversial statements, divorce, coparenting, oh my! Scarlett Johansson reflected on her life in the public eye in her Vanity Fair cover story.
“I’ve been working for, I don’t know, 25 years or something,” the 35-year-old actress began while chatting with the magazine. “Over that time, my feelings towards work, it’s ebbed and flowed. At times I felt like I couldn’t get anything that was substantial or that felt challenging to me.”
Johansson’s latest role in the movie Marriage Story, which also stars Adam Driver, sparked a conversation about the Avengers star’s past relationships. Johansson was married to Ryan Reynolds from 2008 to 2011. (The Proposal star married Blake Lively, with whom he shares three kids, a year after his divorce from Johansson was finalized.)
After a whirlwind romance with Sean Penn, Johansson started seeing journalist Romain Dauriac. The twosome, who share 5-year-old daughter Rose, tied the knot in 2014. They split after less than three years of marriage.
“I had some kind of shared experience with the character, or with any person going through a divorce, really,” Johansson told Vanity Fair. “I understood the bittersweetness of it somehow, in a way. All those kind of in-between feelings that the character has. I understood them because I had gone through them myself.” But she points out that even in terms of her own personal experience of divorce, she drew just as much, or more, on memories of her parents’ struggles than her own.”
While Johansson has been divorced twice, she cited her role as a mother as more influential on her role as Nicole in Marriage Story.
“That was actually more valuable to me than the experience of going through a divorce. Because I never actually went through the kind of divorce that’s portrayed in the film,” she explained. “You know, understanding what it is to coparent —that’s a very specific thing. It’s hard to raise a child with someone you’re no longer with. It’s hard. It’s not probably how it’s ‘supposed to be’ — in quotes — or whatever…. But, you know, I think my ex and I do it as well as we can. You have to prioritize your child and not put yourself in the middle. It has its challenges.”
Johansson has since moved on with Colin Jost. The Saturday Night Live star popped the question in May after two years of dating.
Scroll through for five revelations from the cover story: