Scarlett Johansson: Shades of Scarlett

Much in demand in Hollywood, the actress tells David Michael that she's intent on keeping her feet on the ground

Scarlett Johansson thought she had the fame game all sussed out. On the eve of what was to be her breakout role in Lost in Translation, the actress had a solution to control her expected burgeoning stardom. "I'll just walk around with a big pair of sunglasses and continue to eat at McDonald's," she quipped, the first time we met. At the time, the then 18-year-old probably didn't fully appreciate what was in store for her.

When we meet more than a year later, I'd hardly recognise her. Replacing her punky street smarts is a more glamorous persona: full make-up and a fetching Catherine Malandrino designer dress. In short: too glam to be seen eating a quarter-pounder. It begs the question, how did her earlier resolution work out? "Well, I don't go to McDonald's any more," she laughs. "After I saw Super Size Me - no way!"

If fast food is off limits, there's no doubt she had to supersize her sunglasses to deal with the glare of her increasing stardom. Since starring opposite Bill Murray in Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola's beautifully poised, jet-lagged tale of yearning souls, which was quickly followed by her astutely pitched meditative performance as Johannes Vermeer's muse in Girl With a Pearl Earring, her future has become rather bright.

But Johansson refuses to be dazzled by it all. Director Sofia Coppola described her as an "old soul", while Robert Redford declared, when he directed her seven years ago in The Horse Whisperer, that she was "13 going on 30". Despite her undoubted intelligence and level-headiness (she worked on the jury at last year's Venice Film Festival), you wouldn't blame her for getting swept away with such exposure. The young actress, though, insists she's got a grip on the situation.

"I don't know if I've got swept up," she says. "It's so shocking when you hear that Calvin Klein wants you for their new campaign. You're like, 'who me?'. I guess you have to decide where you draw the line between you saying, this is fun, pretty and fabulous, and being over-exposed."

The media, though, have been captivated by "Scarlett Fever" in the past year. Johansson has several features that send journalists into a descriptive froth. There's her "crushed-rose lips" and her "40-a-day-sounding husky monotone voice". Admitting she's portrayed as "rather saucy" in the press, Johansson has also been the target of many a tabloid gossipmonger trying to pin down her love life.

"I read a lot of things about myself that aren't true," she sighs. "I've read that I've been with people I've never met." Stating that she's "single and busy", she adds, "It's nice not to have any attachment, but likewise, it's nice to have a boyfriend, I'm open to that. But it's hard when you're working constantly to spend enough time with someone."

Her plucky manner is in direct contrast to her latest screen role as Lady Windermere in A Good Woman (an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan). Here she is the innocent fawn caught in the centre of the barbed witticisms of Wilde's world. Wide-eyed and strait-laced, the newly wed Windermere joins her husband and friends to go to Italy. As she prepares to celebrate her 21st birthday, her virtue is tested by the arrival of a notorious older woman from America who threatens to shake up both her marriage and her steadfast principles.

Windermere's naivety, I suggest, doesn't strike me as a trait common with herself. "Well, you put a little piece of yourself into every character that you do. Even if you're playing some psychotic person, which of course I'm not, some part of you is in that character and it's hopefully believable. I always come back to the fact that my own instinct is better than something I build in my mind."

More calculated is her choice of roles. While A Good Woman is more whimsical than Girl With a Pearl Earring, it's a role that continues her trend of largely avoiding frivolous teen film folly. "Yeah, well I do try to do more interesting roles," she says. "Tons of that stuff comes to me, but a lot of it is awful. All these teenage slaying movies, and movies about girls that have deformities that become cheerleaders and then marry the prom king!"

Johansson began acting at the age of eight, with her first port of call a commercials agency. "Somebody had suggested to my mom that we were the very cute Johansson family (she has a brother and sister, plus a twin brother), and we should go to this commercial agency," she recalls. "So we all went, but the only person they wanted was my older brother. Later, I'd go up for more commercial stuff and be devastated, because it was so overwhelming for a little kid - they didn't know if they wanted me, or, like, a little black boy."

Undeterred, the budding actress left the commercials market behind to audition for movies, and at the age of nine got her first role in North, starring Elijah Wood, then made steady progress in films that kept her under the radar and allowed her to happily work without attracting childhood fame. One minor role was a part in the Macaulay Culkin franchise, Home Alone 3. Compared to her co-star Culkin, who took eight years out from acting to recapture some experiences of a normal childhood, Johansson claims the business didn't affect her.

"I always had the chance to do whatever I wanted to do, my parents were very open about that," she says. "Acting has been a passion of mine. I wanted to be in musicals as a kid, and took tap dance, so for me it's a dream come true, my childhood was filled with things that I loved to do, and also very normal things: I lived in New York, I have a family life and went to a regular school. If anything, I look back and think, 'Wow, I did a lot of things that a lot of people don't get to do in their lifetime'."

She is now in constant demand, and we will soon see her in Woody Allen's new film, Match Point (which premiered yesterday at the Cannes Film Festival). "It was definitely an interesting experience dealing with my anxiety," she says of her nervous start working with the legendary director. She did well though, as Allen, clearly smitten, remarked recently: "I usually want to crawl into the ground after I make a film, almost invariably, but I'm very bullish about it because Scarlett Johansson is such a strong actress."

After spending last summer in London working on the film, Johansson has talked about the possibility of buying a house in the city to escape to, for some normality in her life. "It's a place of solace," she says. "I love London, it's an amazing city. I've met some wonderful people there and I also have some family there. I'm from New York, so I feel very at home in London. It's like a metropolitan breeding ground for culture, art, music and diversity. It's a beautiful city, with beautiful history.

"In Hollywood, it's hard to step outside of the circle once you're in it," she concludes. "But in London I was really moved by how accepted I felt there. There was definitely less need to wear my big sunglasses!"