Scarlett Johansson has been the world’s highest-paid actress in 2018 and 2019 and was featured multiple times on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list. She is most well known for her iconic role as the Black Widow, aka. Natasha Romanoff in the MCU.

Early in her career, the actress started to gain recognition after playing Charlotte alongside Bill Murray, in Lost in Translation (2003)

Natasha Romanoff

Natasha Romanoff

The actress has played some other iconic roles, the most recent being Nicole Barber in Marriage Story (2019). The film chronicles the bitter breakdown of a marriage and earned the actress her second Academy Award nomination.

Over the years, the actress has proved that she can mold herself to act in any genre, and cannot be typecasted to a specific role.

Scarlett Johansson Begged to do this David Fincher Film

A few years ago, Vogue did a piece stating some lesser-known facts about Scarlett Johansson.

The article mentions, that the Black Widow star auditioned for the lead role in Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and reportedly did incredibly well too. The 2011 film is a neo-noir psychological thriller based on the 2005 novel by Stieg Larsson. The actress failed to secure the role. However, director David Fincher claimed she was “too s*xy” to realistically play the role of Lisbeth Salander.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Rooney Mara in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

It was rumored that Johansson was rejected for the role after being deemed “too beautiful” by Fincher. However, the Marriage Story actress later denied the rumors. She explained what actually happened to Howard Stern, recalling that the director told her the role demanded her to be “totally uncaring” of herself in order to play Lisbeth.

“I said, ‘I will, I can be that person’ and he was like, ‘No you can’t.’ I really, really wanted that film because I felt I had something to contribute to it and I think Fincher just had a different vision for that character and Rooney Mara is, honestly, so perfect in it.”

Johansson had been waiting to find something that would have taken her acting skill to the next level, and playing Lisbeth Salander would have done exactly that. Fortunately enough, in 2011 the actress had already established herself as an adult actor taking roles in Woody Allen’s big comeback movies and had also cemented her place in the MCU with the role of Natasha Romanoff.

Scarlett Johansson Found Great Success in the MCU

After her big role in Girl With the Dragon Tattoo didn’t pan out, Johansson ended up doing incredibly well in Marvel films.

Scarlett Johansson criticises 'Iron Man 2''s "hypersexualisation" of Black Widow

Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow in Iron Man 2 (2010)

She made her debut with Iron Man 2 (2010). Natasha Romanoff was introduced to audiences as an elite, discreet, and incredibly skilled super spy. Not much is revealed about her personal life, and she maintains that secrecy throughout.

A decade after her Marvel debut, the audience discovered the character and life story of Natasha Romanoff outside of the Avengers, in the solo film Black Widow (2021).

Black Widow can be streamed on Disney+.

Source: Digital Spy