Descriptions

I

Descriptions

I’m charming as a person, also I’m very soothing, I’m fascinating, I’m interesting person and also I’m convincing person.

The movie my best enemy is a film very surprising, this film has very touching moments and also moving, at time in was entertaining, finally this film is astounding.

Interview to Scarlett Johansson

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: How are you?

SCARLETT JOHANSSON: I’m good. I’m in dry, sunny Glasgow right now, enjoying the tropical weather. [laughs] I’m doing a film here called Under the Skin. It’s a project that I’ve been talking about with Jonathan [Glazer] for a few years now—I think he’s actually been working on it, in different incarnations, for about eight or nine years.

HUFFINGTON: What is it about?

JOHANSSON: It’s hard to give a kind of warm-up line for the story because it’s almost like giving the plotline of a Bergman film, but I’m playing a character called Laura, who is an it that becomes a she . . .That’s what the story’s about—it’s about that transformation . . . It basically has no written dialogue, and I don’t think it’s really character-driven. Jon is an incredible visionary, and in the place I’m in right now, it feels really fresh. It might be an impossible project . . . [laughs] We’ll see.

HUFFINGTON: I remember he promised to blog for us. I’ll invite him into the newsroom to meet our editors.

JOHANSSON: He’d absolutely love that. He always has so much fun when we’re out together. I’m already planning what I’m going to wear to the next White House Correspondents’ dinner.

HUFFINGTON: I loved being at the dinner with you, watching all of those senators from both sides lining up to meet you.

JOHANSSON: Next time I go I’m going to find Anderson Cooper’s table and camp out there. My brother was totally geeked-out by Katie Couric. I think he followed her around the entire night. I was chasing after him, and I turned around, and I had a bunch of Republican senators chasing after me. [laughs] But honestly I think it’s the best party in town. I’d rather go to the White House Correspondents’ dinner than any awards show.

HUFFINGTON: How did you guys get interested in politics? Was your family active in that way?

JOHANSSON: Well, my mom was always active. She was always an active voter, whether it was local, state, or federal elections. My mom would take us to polling locations when we were kids. My grandmother was also an active member of the tenants association and a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party, and both of my parents were extremely liberal, so I think I grew up in a household that was very politically conscious—we all watched the elections on TV, and we watched the debates. So it was an awareness that we were raised with, and as we grew into young adults, we just naturally became politically active. It was just understood that it was important, that it was our responsibility.

HUFFINGTON: Has the way you go about that changed at all since you’ve become known as a more public person?

JOHANSSON: Um . . . You know, as a person in the public eye, I have always felt that if I have the good fortune of being able to shed a spotlight on different causes that I feel passionately about . . . I never tell people whom to vote for. I’m not telling people where to give money, but if there is to be a spotlight shed on me, then I’d like to direct that spotlight onto causes I think are worthy or onto interesting, progressive figures.

HUFFINGTON: So on the one hand, you’re putting yourself out there to draw attention to things you think are important. But then, on the other hand, there are aspects of your personal life that the media obsesses over that you’d like to keep private. How do you balance it all?

JOHANSSON: I don’t really profess to know how to balance any of it. [laughs] I don’t profess to know how to balance the positive and the negative media attention. It’s a gamble every time you put yourself out there, and, certainly, I’m always readjusting to it. But I hope it never becomes normal to feel scrutinized. I value my privacy and my personal life—and I certainly don’t exploit my personal life. But that’s not always in your control. There are, unfortunately, people who are interested in prying. So I think you have to protect your private life as much as you possibly can, and, at the same time, find ways to redirect that focus and turn the glare into a positive thing. I don’t know how you do it. I don’t know how anybody’s ever done it. . . . You know, my favorite actors are actors who are enigmatic and mysterious and never make the obvious choice in terms of the projects they do or who they work with or their craft. But I think that the less I know about an actor, the more chance I have of allowing their own persona to kind of slip away so I can get completely lost in the character they’re playing, and the more that people think they know about your personal life, the more difficult it becomes to preserve that. So when I’m not working or promoting something, I try to be as under-the-radar as I can . . . This has just been a bit of a crazy year.

HUFFINGTON: By the way, I loved the video blog you did for us about what’s happening with the drought in Somalia. It was really powerful.

JOHANSSON: Thank you. I’d never done anything like that before. I felt like David Attenborough or something. [laughs]

HUFFINGTON: What I loved about it was that it was an opportunity to go beyond the statistics and all of the dreadful data we get every day about Somalia and tell a story.

JOHANSSON: Well, I’ve been fortunate enough to travel with Oxfam several times, and they’re always so well organized, so it was a good way to show the kind of work they’re doing. You read statistics all the time like, “13 million people are at risk because of the severe drought in East Africa,” but I think those kinds of numbers fall on deaf ears—there’s so much devastation in the world, that it’s a bit overwhelming for people. But by seeing a first-hand account of something like the effects of the drought in the Horn of Africa, you can have a different relationship with the story. It’s one of the blessings that come with new media. I’m hoping to go to Ethiopia in February and do a similar kind of project there because it’s an ongoing crisis, so I think it’s important to keep some focus there right now.