These are interesting questions, given her high-profile and numerous movie appearances (16 feature-length movies in the past five years). She will be 22 this month, and it seems to me that she has grown somewhat less interesting as of late, and certainly less alluring, even if she has become one of the craftiest career women in Hollywood; only Kirsten Dunst has managed her career as well. Like Dunst, who is two years older, Johansson began as a child actress. Both showed an almost eerie maturity as youngsters, though while Dunst turned in a breakout performance in 1994's Interview with the Vampire, Johansson was barely noticeable in films such as Rob Reiner's 1994 disaster North, opposite Sean Connery in Just Cause (1995), in Manny & Lo (1996), Home Alone 3 (1997) and The Horse Whisperer (1998), that last one made when she was about 14.
She re-emerged in 2001, fully formed, in Terry Zwigoff's great Ghost World. Her lips had turned into a sensual pout, her eyes capable of mysterious, soul-stirring aloofness, and her body grown into that of a voluptuous goddess, fit to lounge forever in classic paintings.
She co-starred as Rebecca, along with Thora Birch's Enid. Both girls were supposed to be 18-year-old high-school grads; Birch was closer to 19, but Johansson was only 16, and playing the more mature of the two. The smart, cynical outcasts in town, they constantly searched for the next cool thing, or made fun of whatever's lame. Adorned in a tight sweater and tiny skirt, Johansson used her trademark smoky voice and awkward demeanor to achieve an astonishing realism. It seemed less of a performance than a figure emerged straight from the Daniel Clowes comic book the film was based on.
In Joel and Ethan Coen's The Man Who Wasn't There (released the same year), Johansson played a smaller role as a Lolita-type, looking amazing in black-and-white. She seemed not quite aware of her own potent sexuality as she subtly seduced Billy Bob Thornton's soulless barber.
They say it takes Hollywood two years to catch on to anything, and Johansson's work in 2002 consisted mainly of Eight Legged Freaks, a passable re-do of 1950s giant-bug movies. Her character mainly ran and screamed.
Though she received some critical notice for Ghost World, her two films in 2003 garnered everything short of an actual Oscar nomination. Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation opened with a stunner: Johansson lounging on a Tokyo hotel bed, her delicate undies and derriere aimed at the camera. In this film, she lost her awkwardness and moved into a kind of sleepy dreaminess, a searching, probing intelligence, as well as a kind of pure, wispy sadness. Her natural sex appeal radiates effortlessly from this persona. She made the perfect companion for the wry Bill Murray; she was required neither to compete with him nor to keep up with him. All she had to do was regard him with her quiet, patient curiosity, and it was enough to slow him down and open him up. In Peter Webber's Girl with a Pearl Earring, her bundled sensuality provided a new reality for the movie's Vermeer (Colin Firth); his obsession with her slightly parted lips and her self-conscious shyness was all too believable.
But all this attention tripped her up. As soon as self-awareness set in, Johansson failed to project the same casual, naïve, unforced sensuality; it became more practiced. Worse, producers are selling her as a sex symbol, which diminishes her mystery. (Appearing in a Michael Bay movie like The Island can damage anyone's soul.) Her recent roles have resulted in a string of uninteresting duds. She blundered with her only teen movie, the universally despised The Perfect Score. She played "the girlfriend" in the gutless satire In Good Company and was caught between a show-offy John Travolta and a boring Gabriel Macht in A Love Song for Bobby Long. And she was stuffed into heavy, immobile costumes for the lethargic Oscar Wilde adaptation A Good Woman (all 2004). She apparently did not arouse much interest in Brian De Palma (he lavished more attention on Hilary Swank and Mia Kirshner) and she spent most of this year's underrated The Black Dahlia stuffed into thick costumes and with a pinned-up hairdo.
In Christopher Nolan's recent The Prestige, she gave a more focused performance but was again trumped by her turn-of-the-century outfits, primped and polished to almost museum-worthy perfection. (By contrast, co-star Piper Perabo radiated more physical warmth in the same period clothes.)
Woody Allen came to her rescue for a brief time, giving her a jaw-dropping entrance (she takes the hero's breath away, appearing suddenly during a ping-pong game) as well as an erotically charged, rain-soaked sex scene in the vicious Match Point. She was so potent that Allen cast her in his follow-up; he hasn't done that in more than a decade. But although she was nervous and funny in Scoop, her sex appeal once again disappeared behind her self-conscious performance.
Unlike Angelina Jolie or Nicole Kidman, Johansson is unable to overcome bad movies. Jolie is always striking and Kidman always elegant, but Johansson disappears into a bad movie, or awkwardly stands out from it. She needs a special touch, like Marlene Dietrich had with Josef von Sternberg, someone who can balance her fragile skills perfectly. (I could see her in a good Robert Altman movie—he did wonders for Liv Tyler—or one by Clint Eastwood or Jane Campion, who gave Meg Ryan her best role.) She must be comfortable in a role for her power to come out. She can't turn it on at will. She needs soft, poetic, exploratory movies with quiet wickedness and intelligence. Sadly, these characters are difficult for women to come by in Hollywood. Here's hoping she doesn't get stuck in more movies like The Island before another Lost in Translation comes around.