Archive for September, 2009

GLAMOUR: Your album’s fantastic! How was it to work with Pete Yorn?
Scarlett Johansson: I’ve known him for a while. I’ve worked with both of his brothers, who are in the entertainment industry. One day Pete texted me out of the blue saying, “Hey, do you want to record an album?” I was like, Whoa, that’s a weird message. But I said, “Sure—why not?”

GLAMOUR: How’d he know you sing?
SJ: He didn’t!

GLAMOUR: He just thought you would be good?
SJ: He said he had some weird fever dream—and had this idea that we should do a duets album…. When I started singing along to the songs he was playing me, he said, “I’m really happy that you can sing!” [Laughs.]

GLAMOUR: So would you like to do musical theater?
SJ: I would love to work on Broadway, but I don’t know that it would manifest itself in musical theater…. I have terrible stage fright that I’d have to get over.

GLAMOUR: Really?
SJ: Crippling. Not as a kid. It came on when I was a teenager, and I think it somehow sticks with you.

GLAMOUR: You’ve really grown up in front of the camera, but you didn’t seem to have an awkward phase.
SJ: I was pretty awkward in The Horse Whisperer. I watch it now, and it’s painful. Did I go through a phase where I had cystic acne and greasy hair? No. But I certainly had an awkward phase.

GLAMOUR: I don’t necessarily mean the cystic acne. I just mean the “I don’t know how to be in my own skin” phase.
SJ: I never had that. I think that’s because I was an actor, and you have to be comfortable in your body.

GLAMOUR: I read your piece [about body image and Hollywood] on The Huffington Post recently. Tell me what inspired you to write it.
SJ: I was training for Iron Man 2, which was a lot of work, full-on. I wanted to do a lot of my stunts and to be believable as this superspy, so I started getting fit and eating well and feeling really good. But then there was this rumor mill cranking out stories that I had lost 14 pounds—I could never lose 14 pounds—and was on some miracle diet. I just thought it was ridiculous. I was working my ass off, but I was doing it on my own terms and certainly through no miracle diet. I don’t want to get caught up in that s—t…. I hate seeing these ridiculous articles where [tabloids] guess someone’s weight. But they approach it as fact! I’m sick of it as a woman—not just as a person on the other side of it. As a reader. I got fed up.

GLAMOUR: How do you keep sane about the whole weight thing?
SJ: I want to look good, obviously. I don’t want to look at the screen and go, Oh, my skin looks terrible, or, I look exhausted. That’s why I take care of myself when I work…. But I don’t feel the obligation to be a specific weight. I don’t feel like I have to fit into a body that’s not my body. I have the body I have and I try to maintain it.