Scarlett Johansson: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

2. Charlotte - Lost In Translation (2003)

There may be some consternation over the fact that Sofia Coppola's indie darling movie isn't deemed worthy of the top spot here, but it comes down to the fact that Johansson was gifted probably the best possible co-star to guarantee her success. There are very few actors who appear opposite Bill Murray and look bad, unless it's an early film before he completely learned that the key to good comedy and even better pathos is the relationships you build on screen (and even then, that period of relative ignorance was hardly extended,) so it feels a little like cheating to say this was far and away Johansson's best performance. But thanks to the power of Johansson's isolated, forcibly introverted performance the decision was a particularly close-run thing. Both Murray and Johansson play the perfect pictures of culture shock bemusement, but with deeper waters badly hidden beneath their surfaces. Both are utterly disaffected, not only by their time in Tokyo, where both are aliens, effectively kept hostage by circumstance, but also with their lives as a whole: Murray because of the lack of spark in his marriage, Johansson because of the lack of attention. Like her role for Woody Allen two years later, Charlotte represents something familiar but exotic, beautiful but attainable, and there is an easy charisma about her that makes her chemistry with Murray even stronger, while at the same time irresistibly suggesting that if it wasn't for the lack of attention, and the Tokyo loneliness, she probably wouldn't look at her new companion twice.