…and we reveal why! Scarlett Johansson opens up to Jane Gordon about her career, her looks and how she feels about social media

‘Red lipstick is a cure-all’

All sorts of questions are running through my head as I wait – on a bleak winter’s morning in Paris – to talk to ‘the 𝑠e𝑥iest woman alive’. Is it, for example, possible that Scarlett Johansson – in the words of Domenico Dolce – ‘lives and breathes every womanly nuance’? Does the 29-year-old actress (as Domenico and his fellow iconic Italian designer Stefano Gabbana suggest) really use her eyes as her ‘tool of seduction’? And, in real life, can those ‘luminous pools’ really be as dazzling as the Christmas illuminations outside on the exclusive Avenue Montaigne?

In the event (I am half an hour early), when I finally meet the tiny, enigmatic actress (she is just under 5ft 3in), I can’t make up my mind whether it is those glowing green eyes or her lips – painted a festive berry red – that make her so striking. And when she talks – in deep tones that are warmed by the crackling sound of her throaty laugh (she laughs a lot) – she reveals another side of what Stefano calls her ‘multidimensional’ beauty.

Scarlett’s voice is so distinctive that she is predicted to receive the first-ever Oscar nomination for a ‘speaking only’ role – she plays Samantha, the computer-generated voice that is the love interest in Spike Jonze’s film Her. And since – in the inimitable words of Dolce and Gabbana – Scarlett’s eyes are so ‘compelling’ that they ‘can speak, even when she does not’, I ask her if she might one day find herself Oscar nominated for a role in a silent movie?

‘I actually prefer films where I have as little dialogue as possible because then I have greater freedom to interpret my performance. So I would love to do a silent film – that would be wonderful. I think the reason I enjoyed making films like Girl With a Pearl Earring and, more recently, Under the Skin – where the dialogue is pretty minimal – is because they give me an opportunity to use a kind of nuance that just comes from the expressions in your eyes,’ she says.

This gives me the chance to ask Scarlett if this is a ‘womanly’ nuance and if she knows how many other ‘womanly nuances’ she ‘lives and breathes’ (she doesn’t answer, she just laughs). But it is clear that Scarlett and Dolce and Gabbana speak the same language. The actress has worked with the designers ‘for years’ and says she shares their ‘ideas and ideals’.

Is that, I ask, why they have chosen her to be the face of their new fragrance The One? ‘Why am I The One?’ she ponders. ‘Because I am an actor and all actors think that they are The One. It’s part of our huge egos and makes us so successful in some areas of our lives and not in others,’ she says.

It would be difficult to find an area of Scarlett’s life that hasn’t been wildly successful (except perhaps the breakdown of her two-year marriage to Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds). But she has clearly overcome that setback now that she is engaged to dashing 31-year-old French businessman Romain Dauriac (and is said, although she won’t comment, to have set the date for their wedding in Paris). Has language been a barrier in their romance? Has Scarlett mastered the tricky French grammatical use of subjunctive verbs?

‘In a word, non! I studied Spanish for six years and it seems to be working against my French. Romain speaks good English,’ she says before adding, with a particularly throaty laugh, ‘but, you know, we have no need for words!’

Scarlett is a proud New Yorker – one of four children (she has a twin brother, Hunter) of Danish-born, New-York-based architect Karsten Johansson and Melanie Sloan, a producer from an Ashkenazi Jewish family, who became her daughter’s manager after her film debut, aged nine, in the 1994 movie North.

Scarlett on the set of Dolce & Gabbana’s The One commercial

By the time Scarlett had won her breakthrough role in 1998’s The Horse Whisperer her parents had parted. Her mother continued to manage Scarlett after she made her move, aged 19, from child actress to grown-up movie star in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (for which she won a Best Actress Bafta). But in 2009, while she was married to Ryan Reynolds, Scarlett fired her mother as an ‘act of independence’.

Scarlett has described herself as having ‘Danish looks’ but a ‘Jewish mind’. She says that she is conscious that her father instilled in her ‘a stark minimalist eye’ that is very European. ‘I identify myself most as being a New Yorker, but New York has its own kind of European feel, so I am comfortable in Europe. I love Paris and it’s Romain’s home city,’ she says.

Recent paparazzi pictures showed Scarlett riding round Paris on the back of Romain’s scooter. Something, I suggest, that in a city famed for irate and erratic drivers, is either proof of her total love and trust for her fiancé or an act of extreme bravery. ‘It’s not at all brave. It’s the best way to get around Paris; you can’t get anywhere without a scooter. I think it’s more brave to take a taxi in Paris than to go on the back of a scooter,’ she says.

As an A-list movie star – and the Sexiest Woman Alive in 2006 and 2013 (the first person to win this Esquire magazine accolade twice) – Scarlett is a prime target for the paparazzi. Last month, Luc Besson – the director of Lucy, in which Scarlett has the title role – publicly condemned the way in which the paparazzi had plagued the actress while they were shooting in Taiwan. But, curiously, Scarlett has a more philosophical take on media intrusion.

In Paris with her fiancé Romain Dauriac

‘Most of the time I walk round by myself because I am pretty short, so people don’t tend to see me! I used to worry more when I was younger, even trying to disguise myself, but now I feel more comfortable to just be me. I certainly don’t have an entourage – the only time I would ever go out with a bodyguard would be because somebody thinks something is going to happen to me,’ she says.

The only thing that bothers Scarlett about the possibility of being ‘papped’ is the limits it places on her choice of clothes. ‘There are certain things I see that I think, “God, I would love to wear that if I wasn’t recognisable.” I think if I was just an anonymous person I would probably have a much more exciting day-to-day wardrobe. So I just have to appreciate the clothes I love but can’t wear by encouraging other people, like my girlfriends, to buy and wear them,’ she says, adding that she loved the little black Dolce & Gabbana dress she wore in Martin Scorsese’s ad for The One almost as much as she ‘loved working with Martin and my co-star Matthew McConaughey’.

A clutch of her past co-stars have mentioned Scarlett’s wit and comic genius. Woody Allen – who cast her in three of his films, most famously in Match Point (2005) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) – commented that she was ‘wittier’ than him (‘Any time I say anything amusing, Scarlett tops me’). ‘Am I the funniest woman in Hollywood?’ she asks. ‘It depends on the time of day but, of course, I think I am absolutely hilarious – that comes with the ego territory of acting.’

Scarlett doesn’t display any other obvious signs of a rampant ego. In fact, she seems very rooted in reality and more interested in leading a normal life than attracting attention through tweeting or posting pictures on Instagram, and actually steers clear of any form of social media.

Scarlett with her mum Melanie

‘The main reason I reject social media is because my thumbs and fingers are too big for it,’ she jokes. ‘No, really, for me, it’s because I have a hard enough time staying in touch with my real close friends on the phone and I don’t have any interest in updating the way I communicate. I understand the value of it for someone like my mum, who has a Facebook account and has found lots of friends she hasn’t seen for years – some going back to high school. But I don’t want to use social media to know any of the people I went to high school with that I haven’t stayed in touch with anyway. But maybe that’s just me,’ she says, quickly adding that her friends – particularly her girlfriends – are a very important part of her life and that some of them she knows from primary school.

Pictures from Scarlett’s high-school yearbooks have recently been published in the press and reveal that, even as a teenager, she was beautiful and elegant (no spots or dated hairstyles). Has she never looked anything less than perfect in a photograph? ‘I have some horrible pictures of myself, sure I do. They are in a specific file on my computer,’ she states (although I’m not sure I believe her).

By now I should be focusing on the serious side of Scarlett – she is ‘very political’, an ardent admirer of President Obama (‘a good, decent man’), and is committed to her charity work with Oxfam. But, instead, I find myself questioning her about a quote I have read in which she says she ‘has a talent for craft-making’. Does she really spend her downtime making macramé lampshades and festive decorations out of glue, glitter, tinfoil and tinsel?

‘I don’t know why I said I was a crafty person. I have learnt how to make jewellery and I took enamelling classes. I do like to bake and make cards, but don’t expect to find me in the knitting and felt section of your local craft store. I certainly wouldn’t describe myself as the next Martha Stewart – I’ll leave that to someone else,’ she responds, leading me on to ask another curious question – has Scarlett really fallen out of love with cheese? (Her one-time favourite treat.)

‘I like to bake, but I wouldn’t describe myself as the next Martha Stewart’

‘No, I love cheese – I don’t eat it, but I love it. It’s like my feeling about the clothes I would wear if I weren’t recognisable. I like to smell cheese, I like to watch people enjoying it and I like to encourage people to eat cheeses I know taste really good. But I don’t eat it any more because my body just does better without it,’ she says.

Ensuring that her body does better – by giving up cheese and going to the gym a few times a week – is, she says, part of her job. At least it is for now. Scarlett is aware that at this stage of her career having a great body and a beautiful face is important, not only in gaining her roles in movies but also in the exposure that comes with being a Dolce & Gabbana muse (they refer to her as ‘the embodiment of The One’). However, she does not think that being labelled ‘the 𝑠e𝑥iest woman alive’ limits the future of her acting career.

‘I think if you want to grow out of the stereotype the media stamp on you as an actor you have to focus on challenging yourself and taking on diverse roles. Brad Pitt has managed to do that. While he has always been regarded as “so gorgeous” he has never let that prevent him from being a character actor, which is what he is and what I have always wanted to be. There is nothing wrong with an acting career in which you play the romantic lead or America’s sweetheart or the romantic comedy queen, but I have never thought of myself as playing those kinds of roles. I have always wanted to be a character actor.’

Shooting Dolce & Gabbana’s The One commercial with co-star Matthew McConaughey

Scarlett has ambitions – and possible plans in the pipeline – to direct as well as act in films and admits to a ‘very strong work ethic’. But, privately, she is in a very good place right now. Clearly she is madly in love with Romain – a former journalist who used to edit French art magazine Clark but is now working in advertising. The couple are said to have met through tattoo artist Fuzi Uvtpk, who is rumoured to have given them linked tattoos (Scarlett tells me she has ‘a good collection’ of tattoos but no plans for any more in the near future).

When her work doesn’t take her away she says she leads a ‘normal’ domestic life in Paris with her fiancé. ‘Romain cooks a little bit, but I probably cook more because I enjoy it more. Does he like my food? Well, he says he does, and that’s the most important thing.’

As ambitious as she is, Scarlett does not rule out having children. ‘I would like to have my own family, that would be nice. They say it’s never the right time and I am sure that’s true, but I think you have to plan it like anything else. At some point it is something I look forward to. I am fortunate in that I have had a long career – 20 years – that has been very diverse. So, you know, picking a time to plan a family feels like something that I could do and not feel as though I was missing out,’ she says.

For now, though, Scarlett’s family is limited to Romain and her two dogs (now resident in Paris). As our interview comes to a close, Scarlett is at her most animated as she tells me about Maggie the chihuahua and her new addition, Pancake, ‘a white jack russelly street rat’ that a friend found roaming the alleyways of Los Angeles.

Scarlett aged four (third from left) with her mother, former step-grandmother, father and older siblings Vanessa and Adrian and twin brother Hunter

‘And now Pancake is living the high life with Maggie, who sees her as an intruder and looks at me as if to say, “How could you do this to me?” They are both very fickle. They like Romain – they like anybody – more than me. They are awful,’ she says with a hint of laughter in those green eyes.

Scarlett’s love of animals (one of the reasons why she appeared in 2011’s We Bought a Zoo) is well known, and I ask her if the best gift Romain could give her this Christmas would be an addition to their animal menagerie?

‘When I was eight, I got my best Christmas present ever. I really wanted a pet lizard but my parents said no. Then, on Christmas Eve, my mum and dad led me into their bedroom with all the lights off except for a glowing terrarium with a lizard inside. I was so thrilled. I had him for eight years,’ she says with such an excited expression that I wonder how on earth, come 25 December, Romain will be able to top that – a baby boa constrictor, perhaps, or an infant alligator, beautifully gift-wrapped in scarlet ribbon?