Scarlett Johansson says actors should stick to acting and stop making political statements
'The other stuff is not my job'
March 26, 2021
Actress Scarlett Johansson. (Photo by Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Netflix)
Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson rejected the public compulsion to seek political statements from celebrities and said that actors should stick to acting instead.
Johansson made the comments during an interview with "The Gentlewoman," a British magazine.
"I don't think actors have obligations to have a public role in society," said the star of the popular Avengers superhero movie franchise.
"Some people want to, but the idea that you're obligated to because you're in the public eye is unfair. You didn't choose to be a politician, you're an actor," she explained.
Johansson has faced her fair share of woke criticism in her career. She was accused of "whitewashing" in 2017 when she took on the lead role in "Ghost In The Shell," a classic Japanese anime story. Later in 2018 she crossed the transgender lobby when she took the role of a transgender man in the movie, "Rub and Tug." She initially defended her decision but eventually withdrew from that film after public outrage.
She went on in the Gentlewoman interview to exhort other actors to stick to acting.
"Your job is to reflect our experience to ourselves; your job is to be a mirror for an audience, to be able to have an empathetic experience through art. That is what your job is," Johansson continued.
"Whatever my political views are, all that stuff, I feel most successful when people can sit in a theatre or at home and disappear into a story or a performance and see pieces of themselves, or are able to connect with themselves through this experience of watching this performance or story or interaction between actors or whatever it is," she added.
"And they're affected by it and they're thinking about it, and they feel something. You know? They have an emotional reaction to it – good, bad, uncomfortable, validating, whatever," Johansson explained.
"That's my job," she said. "The other stuff is not my job."
Johansson is starring in the latest Marvel superhero movie, "Black Widow," which was scheduled be released in movie theaters and on Disney's streaming service on May 1, but was pushed back to July 9.
Here's the trailer from her latest movie:
[Ed. Note: This story has been updated with additional information.]