WITH two best actress nominations for tonight’s Golden Globes, newly minted “It Girl” Scarlett Johansson is the toast of Hollywood – but she’s every inch a Gotham girl.
The fashionably hip 19-year-old ingenue has moviegoers besotted with her beguiling mix of teenage vulnerability, street-smart style and the self-assured worldliness that is every native New Yorker’s birthright.
While Scarlett fever is a recent national phenomenon, the strawberry blonde has been acting in the Big Apple since she was 8, slowly building a momentum that’s peaked with two show-stopping roles.
As an emotionally adrift twentysomething who strikes up an unlikely friendship with Bill Murray’s washed-up actor, Johansson defined deadpan cool in Sofia Coppola’s Tokyo-set “Lost in Translation.”
Then she shed her 21st-century mannerisms to give a luminous, largely silent performance as servant muse to Dutch master painter Johannes Vermeer in the period drama “Girl with a Pearl Earring.”
And, at tonight’s awards ceremony, the lush-lipped hipster with the distinctive, throaty voice will be front and center, having earned nominations for best actress in a comedy and best actress in a drama. It’s clearly Johansson’s year – a fact she’s not really comfortable with.
“It’s awful to be the ‘It Girl’ because then you’re the ‘Once-Was-an-It-Girl’ girl,” she told People magazine recently.
But the girl – who graduated from Manhattan’s Professional Children’s School last spring – can’t help it.
In the past six months, she’s graced countless magazine covers, trod red carpets from Venice to L.A., worn designer dresses from Prada and Marc Jacobs and got herself an actor boyfriend – she’s been casually dating fellow Golden Globe nominee Patrick Wilson, the 30-year-old star of “Angels in America.”
Even Donald Trump is a fan.
“My son is in love with Scarlett,” The Donald gushed during an appearance with her on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.”
As befits a Hollywood star, the Manhattan-born Johansson has become bicoastal.
She just bought her first apartment in Los Angeles, where her Bronx-born, movie-producer mother, Melanie Sloan, lives. She divides her time between there and the Greenwich Village home of her Danish-born architect father, Karsten Johansson, who split from her mom five years ago.
The A-lister maintains her indie sensibility – and has the downtown hipster lifestyle honed.
She’s regularly spotted around the West Village, with Italian sandwich bar ‘ino and Blue Ribbon Bakery among her favorite haunts.
“She comes in with her girlfriends more often than not,” said Blue Ribbon Bakery manager Eric Brammer. He said she recently came in for brunch with “That ’70s Show” star Topher Grace, with whom she’s about to start filming the comedy “Synergy.”
“She’s very sweet, very unassuming, although seemingly very worldly for a 19-year-old,” Brammer said.
The 5-foot-3 actress – named for the strong-willed heroine of “Gone with the Wind” – has a bewitching screen effect on men old enough to be her father.
With her pale, heart-shaped face, distinctive pout and worldly self-assurance, she’s the perfect Lolita-esque muse.
She proved an object of desire for Billy Bob Thornton in “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” Bill Murray in “Lost in Translation,” Colin Firth in “Girl with a Pearl Earring” – and she’ll charm John Travolta next year in “A Love Song for Bobby Long.”
“Why do older men go for me? I dunno,” Johansson told the London Times recently. “Because youth is very attractive.”
Robert Redford described the teenage prodigy as “13 going on 30” when he made “The Horse Whisperer” with her six years ago, and her wise-beyond-her-years demeanor is often remarked upon.
“She’s definitely an old soul with a frisky spirit,” says Brian Robbins, who directed her newest movie, “The Perfect Score,” which comes out next week. Johansson plays a rebellious brunette high schooler plotting to steal the answers to upcoming SAT tests.
“When she first walked on to the set, she stopped it cold – she was dressed very sexily and she just strutted on full of confidence and swagger,” he says.
But the “old soul” is still a card-carrying teen. She loves makeup, pizza, shopping at Barney’s and tooling around Malibu in the brand new convertible she bought after passing her driving test late last year.
The self-described ham reportedly plays a mean game of pool, and her mature, articulate musings on life are often punctuated with hip-hop slang.
And this girl with the pearl earring is something of a piercing addict – she has two holes in her left ear, one in the right and one in her belly button. She reportedly planned to pierce her left eyebrow and lower lip until her mother – who is also her agent – put the kibosh on that idea. Johansson is the only actor in a family of four children, which includes a twin brother, Hunter, who is studying environmental sciences at the University of Vermont.
“We’ve got a nice big family, we’re all really close,” Johansson said recently, adding that the “divorce is the best thing that happened to our family. It’s nice. They’re much happier, and I have a really cool stepdad, too.”
Johansson first fell in love with the idea of acting after seeing Jodie Foster in “Silence of the Lambs” when she was 7.
“Perfect Score” director Robbins says Johansson’s great skill is underplaying a role.
“Her subtlety is so good, in her case less is definitely more,” he says. “It’s almost really effortless for her – you never really catch her acting.”
Scarlett Johansson’s filmography:
Perfect Score, The (2004)
Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003)
Lost in Translation (2003)
Eight Legged Freaks (2002)
American Rhapsody, An (2001) (at 15)
Man Who Wasn’t There, The (2001)
Ghost World (2000)
My Brother the Pig (1999)
Horse Whisperer, The (1998)
Home Alone 3 (1997)
Fall (1997)
Manny & Lo (1996)
If Lucy Fell (1996)
Just Cause (1995)
North (1994)
TWO FOR THE SHOW
Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama
Cate Blanchett Veronica Guerin
Nicole Kidman Cold Mountain
Scarlett Johansson Girl with a Pearl Earring
Charlize Theron Monster
Uma Thurman Kill Bill – Vol. 1
Evan Rachel Wood Thirteen
Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Jamie Lee Curtis Freaky Friday
Scarlett Johansson Lost In Translation
Diane Keaton Something’s Gotta Give
Diane Lane Under the Tuscan Sun
Helen Mirren Calendar Girls