It's Scarlett Johansson! And Boy She's Got A Lot To Say

Scarlett Johansson is all about that low-key life with a high-key career. Here, the Captain America: Civil War star talks smear tests, being a woman in Hollywood and that feeling when you really want to text a man but really, really shouldn't.

- Jada Yuan

Fifteen years ago, when I first interviewed Scarlett Johansson as the unknown star of Ghost World, her mum was her manager, and she cheerily gave me her daughter’s mobile phone number directly.

“Why did my mum do that? I think that was around when mobile phones came out, so we didn’t realise how vulnerable we would all be at some point,” the megastar says now, having weathered a 2011 hacking that saw her private photos leaked to the world. Scarlett was 16 then, and we talked about men – namely Patrick Swayze, who was, and still is, her top celebrity obsession.

She’s just as funny and unguarded today, at a Manhattan café, where our conversation again veers into male territory. Once we’ve got comfortable, I confide that a guy from my past still late-night texts me. I always respond; I always hate myself for it. Armoured in black skinny jeans and a motorcycle jacket, Scarlett takes a sip of her iced tea. “The best thing to do is to shut it off,” she advises. “Long, long ago, I had someone in my life who was forever unavailable… but, like, so attractively unavailable.” (She doesn’t reveal if she’s referring to any of her rumoured past romantic partners, among them Jared Leto, Benicio del Toro, Justin Timberlake and Sean Penn, but my money’s on perma-bachelor Leto.)