The fact that Scarlett Johansson, the actress whose movies have now made over $15 billion worldwide, was once a seven-year-old standing in front of a mirror and staring at herself until she sobbed has an almost poetic quality. She wasn’t acting as dramatic as kids can be at times. She was rehearsing. Carefully. Methodically. She was working toward something she couldn’t quite put her finger on yet, but she wouldn’t give up. In some way, that picture captures the essence of her training in this craft.
Johansson, the daughter of a Danish architect and a New York producer, was raised in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. The creative nature of the household was evident. She went to PS 41, a public elementary school located a few blocks away from the kind of cultural density that can only be found in New York City. However, her early hunger—an almost unwavering conviction that performance was her calling—shaped her far more than any classroom. Her family first laughed at it, then encouraged it, and then they saw something genuine emerge.
She tried out for a talent agency when she was seven years old, but one of her brothers was chosen. Most kids would have ignored it or pouted for a week before moving on. It seems that Johansson interpreted it as a challenge. She enrolled at the renowned Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York, whose alumni list resembles a chronicle of American acting. Perhaps the most rigorous acting philosophy of the 20th century was Strasberg’s approach, which was based on emotional truth and genuine personal experience for performance. It’s arguable whether a child fully understands its philosophy, but she was in those rooms, taking something in.
Next, for a short while, were the commercials. Like many young performers in New York, she worked the circuit with her mother while trying out for them. She resigned almost right away. She later stated, “I didn’t want to promote Wonder Bread,” with a directness that gives the impression that she has always known exactly who she is and isn’t. For decades, her career choices would be shaped by her instinct to turn down the easy route when it seemed cheap.
A shift toward rigorous theatrical training ensued. She enrolled in the Professional Children’s School, a private school in Manhattan created especially for young performers balancing academic requirements with career goals. The school operates on the understanding that its students have a different relationship with time and ambition than most teenagers, and it has an unusual history with educated figures ranging from musicians to actors. It’s not precisely a conventional schooling. Attending it might hasten some types of maturity while underdeveloping others, but for Johansson, it seemed appropriate.
Alongside Ethan Hawke in an off-Broadway production of Sophistry, she made her stage debut with two lines. Two lines. It’s still unclear if she realized, while standing in those wings, that this was the start of something huge, or if it just seemed like another step in a direction she was already determined to pursue. She debuted in a movie by the age of nine. Her parents had divorced by the time she was thirteen, and she was navigating the strange adolescence of a working actor, several films into a career that most people never begin.
In actuality, Scarlett Johansson’s educational trajectory consists of two concurrent tracks. In addition to formal education at PS 41, the Professional Children’s School, and the Strasberg Institute, there was also learning that took place on stages and sets while observing directors such as Robert Redford and later Sofia Coppola in action. She claims that Coppola gave her new insight into the quality of stillness and how to inhabit a character. She was shown something completely different by Woody Allen. Every partnership was a masterclass in its own right.
Johansson applied to the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University after graduating from the Professional Children’s School. She was turned down. The BAFTA, the Tony, the Academy Award nominations, the billions at the box office, and other subsequent events tend to overshadow this kind of detail, but it’s worth pondering for a little while. Scarlett Johansson was turned down by NYU. After that, she made the decision to devote all of her attention to film. The subtle irony in that series of events is difficult to ignore.
She never attended the film school. Instead, she received something messier and more beneficial: decades of working with extraordinary people, making public mistakes, selecting risky projects when safer ones were available, and realizing that an actor’s true education never truly ends. It simply keeps taking on new forms.
