When Scarlett Johansson sang The Beatles on karaoke
Scarlett Johansson made her on-screen debut when she was just nine, starring in Rob Reiner’s 1994 comedy adventure North. Since then, she has become the highest-grossing box-office star of all time, having starred in a mixture of independent and commercial hits.
The actor expressed her struggle to find good roles as a teenager, stating that adults often wrote scripts that “portray kids like mall rats and not seriously…kids and teenagers just aren’t being portrayed with any real depth.” Luckily, her performance as a teenage outsider in Terry Zwigoff’s 2001 black comedy Ghost World led to her breakthrough, paving the way to more prominent roles.
Over the years, Johansson has starred in major feature films such as Jojo Rabbit, Marriage Story, and Her, as well as playing Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, one of her most memorable performances remains her role as Charlotte in Sofia Coppola’s 2003 romantic-comedy drama Lost in Translation. Starring alongside Bill Murray as an alienated American living in Japan, Johansson, who was just 17 at the time of filming, gives an outstanding performance as the reserved and introspective character. In the film’s most recognisable scene, Murray’s Bob and Charlotte go to a karaoke bar, with Johansson’s character singing ‘Brass in Pocket’ by The Pretenders.
Yet that’s not the only time Johnasson has found herself doing karaoke. When the actor was filming The Avengers in Cleveland, Ohio, she enjoyed time off with co-star Chris Evans by indulging in karaoke. According to Evans, who plays Captain America: “It was a dive bar. It was in the middle of nowhere. There must have been no more than 20 people in the whole bar.” He continued: “On the stage was this band, this real broke-down band, and [Johansson] said, ‘We should get up there and sing ‘Rocky Raccoon’.”
Johansson described The Beatles’ ‘Rocky Raccoon’, taken from their self-titled ninth studio album, also known as The White Album, as “always a good karaoke song.” She continued: “The singer, I think she just had one too many, and she was just, like, done…and I was like, ‘This is somebody who’s got to do something about this.'”
Evans claimed that after Johansson asked the guitarist if he knew the chords to ‘Rocky Raccoon’, and “she got up on stage and just started singing. Not only was she amazing, the whole bar got into it. I didn’t even think they knew who it was…but that’s Scarlett. She’s got a wild streak in her. She’s adventurous.”
Johansson joked that she thought Evans would join in, “You know, his love for musical theatre and all. That’s a little-known fact about Chris Evans… he’s a big singing-dancing enthusiast.”
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