Scarlett Johansson names her greatest onscreen lover: “She doesn’t have stubble, which is a plus”
Chemistry is something that can’t be faked, no matter how good an actor they are. Like any other movie star, Scarlett Johansson has indulged in a fair few onscreen romances, and some have sizzled while others fizzled.
Remember when Marvel tried to create a forced romance between Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff and Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner in one of the Avengers films? The studio would rather you didn’t, since the plot thread was quickly abandoned after everyone realised they couldn’t generate a single spark between them.
The connection between the two-time Academy Award nominee and Ewan McGregor in The Island was practically non-existent, too, with Johansson determined to take matters into her own hands and up the salacious ante by performing a topless scene, only to be shut down by Michael Bay, of all people.
As Spike Jonze’s Her showed, she doesn’t even need to be onscreen to pull her weight in a fictional romance, with her breakthrough role opposite Bill Murray in Lost in Translation another indicator that co-star chemistry isn’t something Johansson has a hard time finding, even when her paramours are less than conventional.
The opposite can also be true; she performed the only nude scene of her entire career in Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin, but there was absolutely nothing romantic about it, with Johansson’s cold, emotionless alien weaponizing her sexuality to turn her unwitting victims into a fine paste of plasma.
Marriage Story‘s Adam Driver wouldn’t make her list, for obvious reasons, but when pressed to name the greatest filmic romance of her life, Johansson could only make figurative doe-eyes toward her Oscar-winning co-star, Penélope Cruz, in a 2008 romantic dramedy directed by some bespectacled creep.
“Penélope was pretty great, I have to say,” she explained. “She’s full of passion and life, and she doesn’t have stubble, so that’s a plus.” In Vicky Cristina Barcelona, her Cristina and Cruz’s María Elena form two-thirds of a love triangle alongside Javier Bardem’s Juan Antonio Gonzalo, which includes some passionate lip-locking from the two female leads.
Cruz might have gone down in the history books as Johansson’s favourite onscreen romance, but she didn’t feel that way when the cameras were rolling, describing it as “the least sexy thing you can ever imagine,” thanks largely to the fact that the pair were surrounded by “60 crewmen eating salami sandwiches.”
Scoop and The Prestige‘s Hugh Jackman also got a mention for being “wonderful,” but there was one key factor that pushed Cruz over the top and toward the summit: “I might just say Penelope, just because of the lack of stubble,” which is fair enough.
