The roles Scarlett Johansson felt “bitter” about losing: “It was hard for me”
Getting rejected is hard at the best of times, but it’s even more challenging when you’re a child in Hollywood. Scarlett Johansson knows this well, having started her career as a mere kid when she landed her first job in Rob Reiner’s North at the age of nine.
The actor found herself in a mixture of successes and failures during the 1990s – the worst arguably being Home Alone 3 (what’s the point without Macaulay Culkin?) – but she soon found her groove with Ghost World. This was a turning point for the young Johansson, who played a supporting role in the black comedy about two high school graduates navigating their next steps.
Two years later, the 17-year-old starred in the Oscar-winning Lost in Translation by Sofia Coppola, and from there, she established herself as a vital new figure in Hollywood, landing countless roles since which move between blockbusters like those in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and more subversive cuts such as Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin, making a career for herself that few have been able to compete with.
Still, she’s had to experience a few rejections in her time, starting when she was young, and while she was upset at the time, these things clearly happened for a reason. If it wasn’t for the roles Johansson did nab when she was young, her career might not have ended up on the path that it did – and that path has made her the highest-grossing female actor in all of Hollywood.
Regardless, it can be disappointing to know you’ve missed out on a good film, and for Johansson, she can’t help but lament the fact that she could’ve appeared in two stone-cold classics.
The first is Jumanji, released in 1995, for which she auditioned but sadly lost to Kirsten Dunst. “I saw Jumanji. I liked it. I wasn’t bitter enough then; now I’m bitter,” she revealed, as per Yahoo. Directed by Joe Johnston, it’s a family favourite with Robin Williams in the lead, and Johansson can’t help but look back and feel jealous that she didn’t get a chance to appear alongside the comedic legend in such an iconic film.
Another role that she missed out on was The Parent Trap remake, which, of course, was a breakout moment for Lindsay Lohan. She played the dual role of twins Hallie and Annie, who meet for the first time at a summer camp and do all they can to get their estranged parents back together.
It’s a charming film that Johansson would’ve surely given a great performance in, but ultimately, it’s hard to argue that Lohan wasn’t the perfect choice for the roles. “I started to get bitter… it was hard for me,” Johansson admitted about missing out on the film.
That’s just the way Hollywood goes, though, and it clearly wasn’t meant to be. Instead of appearing in the Nancy Meyers film, Johansson would star instead in Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer that year, which might not have been as popular, but it allowed the actor to work with a legend, at least.
Before she knew it, she’d launched an incredibly successful career, though, so she could hardly stay bitter about the projects she didn’t get. Life’s too short.
