Beyond Borders

The new global superstar is as likely to be based in Nollywood as Hollywood. At a moment when geopolitical pressures feel more terrestrial than ever, Gaby Wood meets the transcendent actresses who know no limits.

Deepika Padukone, India

India’s highest-paid actress: Padukone’s latest film made $50 million domestically and $80 million worldwide. Here she wears a Dries Van Noten flopsy-bow top and 3.1 Phillip Lim pants.

Fashion Editor: Camilla Nickerson.

Golshifteh Farahani, Iran

Trailblazing and unrelenting, the Ibiza- and Portugal-based Farahani flouts the strict rules of her native Iran. “I’m out there . . . provoking the youth,” she says. Farahani wears an Erdem dress in Duchess Blue.

Alba Rohrwacher, Italy

Rohrwacher’s dream role? “A male part,” she says. “Like Cate Blanchett in I’m Not There or Tilda Swinton in Orlando.” Here Rohrwacher wears a draped sleeve frock from Michael Kors Collection and Miu Miu platform sandals.

Scarlett Johansson, U.S.A.

“It feels like we’re all kind of catching up,” says Johansson of producing and acting in the post–#MeToo and #OscarsSoWhite era. She wears a silver-flecked, pieced together top and pants by Alexander McQueen.

WHEN SCARLETT JOHANSSON was seventeen, she shot Lost in Translation in Tokyo. “It was really hard,” she remembers. “It was a seven-week shoot; I missed my boyfriend; we had a Japanese crew, so there was a language barrier. I remember being quite lonely.” That, to a large extent, was also the tone of the film: the anomie of geographic displacement, filtered through the bright lights of a luxury high-rise hotel. “It was just a different time to be an American in Tokyo,” she says.