Says Johansson of the greatest difference performing on the stage versus the screen:
"I love film and acting for the camera...But the idea of working on something that you owned every night was so appealing. In some sense in film your performance doesn't really belong to you. It belongs to the director and the editor and the producers. Onstage what the audience saw was everything you had, not some reshaped version of it."
As for one of her favorite parts of performing live: "The same arc was there every night, of course, and yet it changed and was a living, breathing thing. Every performance was like doing a new Rubik's Cube." That, and the sense of family created amongst the company that is unique to the theater.
A veteran of the business and only in her mid-twenties, Johansson made her professional acting debut in Sophistry alongside Ethan Hawke off-Broadway. She is a four-time Golden Globe nominee and BAFTA winner. Film credits include The Man Who Wasn't There, Lost in Translation, Match Point, The Girl with the Pearl Earring, He's Just Not That Into You, The Spirit, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and The Other Boleyn Girl, among many others. She can currently be seen in Iron Man 2 starring Robert Downey Jr. In May 2008 she released her album, Anywhere I Lay My Head, a collection of Tom Waits covers featuring one original song and recently released a duet album Break Up with Pete Yorn.
