Scarlett Johansson - Acting Career - Transition To Adult Roles

Transition To Adult Roles

Johansson made the transition from teen roles to adult roles, with two such roles in 2003. In the Sofia Coppola film Lost in Translation, she played Charlotte, a listless and lonely young wife, opposite Bill Murray. Roger Ebert wrote that he loved the film and described the performances of Johansson and Murray as "wonderful." Entertainment Weekly wrote of Johansson's "embracing, restful serenity," and the New York Times said, "At 18, the actress gets away with playing a 25-year-old woman by using her husky voice to test the level of acidity in the air ... Ms. Johansson is not nearly as accomplished a performer as Mr. Murray, but Ms. Coppola gets around this by using Charlotte's simplicity and curiosity as keys to her character." Johansson won the BAFTA Award and the Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. She received nominations from a number of film critic organizations, including the Broadcast Film Critics Association, and the Chicago Film Critics Association,

Johansson played Griet in Peter Webber's Girl with a Pearl Earring. While noting, "Audiences feel as if they are spying on a moment of artistic inspiration when painter Vermeer creates the title work", USA Today praised her, suggesting, " is having a banner year that Oscar voters should recognize." In his review for the New Yorker, Anthony Lane said, "What keeps Webber's movie alive is the tenseness of the setup ... and, above all, the presence of Johansson. She is often wordless and close to plain onscreen, but wait for the ardor with which she can summon a closeup and bloom under its gaze; this is her film, not Vermeer's, all the way." Owen Gleiberman, for Entertainment Weekly, wrote of her "nearly silent performance", observing, "The interplay on her face of fear, ignorance, curiosity, and sex is intensely dramatic." She was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama and the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. She was also nominated by the London Film Critics' Circle, the Phoenix Film Critics Society and the British Independent Film Awards.

Johansson was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in June 2004. In the same year, she voiced a role in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and appeared in an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan entitled A Good Woman, opposite Helen Hunt and Tom Wilkinson. It received a limited U.S. release, and was both a box office and critical failure. It was described by the New York Times as a "misbegotten Hollywood-minded screen adaptation" with "an excruciating divide between the film's British actors (led by Tom Wilkinson and Stephen Campbell Moore), who are comfortable delivering Wilde's aphorisms ... and its American marquee names, Helen Hunt and Scarlett Johansson, little connection to the English language as spoken in the high Wildean style." She also appeared in the critically panned, teen, heist film The Perfect Score, which marks the first of four films done with actor Chris Evans, and in In Good Company, in a supporting role opposite Topher Grace and Dennis Quaid. Her performance in the dark, Southern drama, A Love Song for Bobby Long, earned her a third Golden Globe for Best Actress nomination.