Scarlett Johansson

In Asteroid City (2023), Scarlett Johansson's Midge Campbell rehearses a part while talking to Jason Schwartzman's Augie through the facing windows of their cabins. Johansson makes the rehearsal feel like an excuse to keep the conversation going. We were moved by how much the two seem to want from each other, in a town where everyone else is so hard to reach. She does the film's best work, finding a need for company within Wes Anderson's carefully arranged scenes.

The adult breakthrough came with Lost in Translation (2003) and Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003), before Iron Man 2 (2010) introduced her Natasha Romanoff. The action films never entirely took over. Her (2013), a leading role played entirely through her voice, sits between that arrival and Avengers: Endgame (2019). Marriage Story (2019) gave her the emotional exposure of a relationship drama in the same year as the latter. These choices matter: she has kept finding work that asks more of her than physical assurance.

The difficulty is how often a film treats that assurance as sufficient. In Jurassic World Rebirth (2025), her Zora Bennett is a mercenary whose loss gets mentioned and then forgotten; David Koepp has supplied an occupation where a character was needed. Johansson is dry and capable, and the part scarcely asks her to be anything else. Her Elita-1, the brisk, ambitious supervisor in Transformers One (2024), gets too little to do as well. The voice is well cast; the writing ought to give it more work.

Nor does returning to Anderson guarantee a part worth her time. The Phoenician Scheme (2025) gives her Cousin Hilda a place in its procession of business meetings, with Barney Pilling cutting the visits into brisk, short chapters. That helps the pace, but Johansson is one of several actors who leave before their characters have become people. Midge gets time with another person, and Johansson makes use of it. For Johansson, start with Asteroid City, even if Anderson's manner takes some getting used to.