Scarlett Johansson – the biggest female box-office draw of all time – pulls no punches about abusive men, her political ambitions... and those skin-tight superhero suits

Scarlett Johansson arrives alone. This is a surprise. Hollywood superstars usually come with spin doctors and minders, but the most successful female actor of all time, whose films have grossed $3.6 billion, turns up all on her own, slipping into a quiet corner of a bar near her home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan without anybody really noticing.

‘Hey, how ya doing?’

When she speaks, heads turn. The accent is native New Yorker, but the voice is deep, smoky and unmistakably that of Scarlett Johansson – Black Widow in the Avengers movies, star of Lost In Translation and the voice of Kaa in The Jungle Book – as she shrugs off a rain-soaked parka.

Scarlett Johansson is ready to come out fighting, then. But there’s another fight going on. We’re having this conversation before news breaks of her divorce from Romain Dauriac

‘I’m a private person and I live a pretty low-key lifestyle as much as I can. Living in New York aids that. I was born and raised here so I can scurry around the streets like any other city rat.’

She feels completely at home, which may be why Johansson is in a surprisingly combative mood. She’ll explain why she’s going into real-life battle with Donald Trump, whose attitudes to women appall her. And talking of abusive men, Johansson will describe how she and her friends actually caught one when they were teenagers.

When challenged about wearing a skin-tight, sexy superhero costume yet again for Ghost In The Shell, she’ll point out that the likes of Chris Evans as Captain America in The Avengers have their assets on show too.

Scarlett Johansson is ready to come out fighting, then. But there’s another fight going on that I can’t see. We’re having this conversation before news breaks of her divorce from Romain Dauriac, the French advertising executive she married in 2014, a month after the birth of their daughter, Rose.

She admits they are having a hard time trying to work out where to settle their daughter. ‘I work a lot so I don’t really live anywhere for very long periods of time. Sometimes I live in Paris for a couple of months, then I have a job some place and then I come back to New York. I guess my base is New York-ish, ’cos my family is here. But my husband’s family is all in Paris so we try to spend a lot of time there also. Especially now that we have Rose.’

She travels constantly, and so far has been taking Rose with her everywhere. But they’ll have to decide where to settle Rose when she goes to school, won’t they? ‘Yeah, then we’ll all be in one place,’ she tells me, sounding conflicted but hopeful. But the next morning, it all begins to look very difficult indeed.

Scarlett with husband Romain Dauriac in 2015

Newspaper reports say that she and Dauriac are separating. They begin a court battle over custody of Rose. Johansson is only 32 and it looks like she is about to end a second marriage. The first was to Ryan Reynolds (star of Deadpool) but they divorced after three years, as now seems to be the case again. So what has gone wrong?

During the interview she calls Dauriac her ‘hubby’ and chats – apparently happily – about the popcorn shop they own in Paris, as if their working relationship, at least, is still alive. But with hindsight there is one massive clue to the state of her mind and her heart, when she talks about her twin brother Hunter, who lives close by in Manhattan.

‘I’ve realised in the past couple of years that I have never actually been alone. I have always been with somebody. And in those first moments of life, even just the spark of it, having somebody else there must affect one, right?’

She means from before birth, in the womb. ‘Because of that, I’m learning now how to be alone just with myself. But it’s challenging. It doesn’t mean that I don’t feel alone at times or lonely, but I’m realising that I’ve always had this other half out there.’

Scarlett Johansson comes across as quietly confident in herself

The clue comes when I ask whether her closeness to her twin has had an impact on her love life. ‘It affects all your life, like in my intimate relationships, or how I’ve chosen people to be with.’ And this is where she seems to be talking about Dauriac, Reynolds and other lovers. ‘I mean, I’ve chosen people as a result of not wanting to feel alone – or trying to fill some kind of space, or deal with the way I feel when I am in a crowd or suddenly on my own.’

In person, Johansson comes across as quietly confident in herself. She’s dressed simply in black jeans and a black leotard top, her hair cut into a boyish flick. She’s wearing thick black glasses and looks like a hip architect, like her Danish father. The only showy thing about her is a pair of Doc Marten-style boots artfully spattered with multi-coloured paint.

She’s worth an estimated $80 million. But you wouldn’t know it to look at her. And it still took a lot of guts to stand up in front of half a million women at the anti-Trump rally in Washington in January and get ‘really, really personal’ about her own life.

There, Johansson described how, as a 15-year-old growing up in New York with her dad, struggling for money and trying to be an actress, becoming aware of her sexuality, she went for advice and contraception at the kind of family-planning clinic Trump wants to cut. ‘I was nervous about taking this next stride towards womanhood... no judgment, no questions asked, [they] provided a safe place where I could be treated with gentle guidance.’

For someone as guarded as Johansson, the speech was hugely exposing – so why make it at all? ‘Normally, I don’t feel like I need to talk to people about such intimate matters. Obviously. Even more so, because everything I say is pulled apart in a million different ways. But at this point, I don’t care. I feel that if I can share my story and make an impact then that’s way more valuable to me than preserving the remnants of privacy.’

I have a question from my own daughter, who is 15 now and a big fan: how does it feel to know that almost everyone she meets fancies her?

And this is only the beginning, it seems. She will be campaigning even more from now on.

‘I’ve had it. You know what I mean? I am sick of this conversation being in the mouths of politicians who want to decide what I’m going to do with my body, whether my friends and I are going to be valued or equal to our male friends or family members.’

Her voice gets louder, more heads turn – she’s really passionate about this.

‘These conversations feel so archaic. I’ve got tons of girlfriends who are strong, independent women, doing their thing, raising kids, on a career path, or both, and you just think, “What is this?” I’m standing up for myself, I’m standing up for my sister and my daughter and my mum and my friends.’

She’s not above aiming at the women around Trump, though, implying they should stand up to him. Johansson has just starred in a satirical skit for the popular US TV show Saturday Night Live in which she imitates ‘the First Daughter’ Ivanka in a fake advert for a new scent called Complicit. ‘For the woman who could stop all this... but won’t.’

Johansson’s Jewish mother from the Bronx was a film buff who took her along to auditions, and she made her screen debut in the comedy North. How did she manage to survive as a young, beautiful would-be star among the infamously lecherous men who ran Hollywood at that time?

It took a lot of guts to stand up in front of half a million women at the anti-Trump rally in Washington in January and get ‘really, really personal’ about her own life

‘The whole world is like that. It’s true in any industry. Hell, it’s true walking down the street. I remember walking through New York, nobody knew who the hell I was, being 15 or 16 years old and having guys cat-call, and creepy guys, you know?’

Did they do anything physical? ‘I was in Washington Square Park at a parade with my girlfriends and all of us got groped by the same creepy person who walked past. We had to find a bunch of police officers and find this guy and make a report.’

They had him arrested? ‘Yeah, we did. But, you know, it’s hard to navigate as a young woman or teenager. Suddenly you’re aware of your body, and then you’re also understanding its power. I don’t think I struggled any more than any other young person.’

Now, of course, she is seen as a sex symbol. The long, lingering shot of her teenage backside at the start of her breakthrough movie Lost In Translation established that. I have a question from my own daughter, who is 15 now and a big fan: how does it feel to know that almost everyone she meets fancies her?

‘Ha! Nice. Yeah. That’s a very English way of saying it. Certainly, for every person I meet who fancies me, there is another who thinks, “Who does this person think she is?” Maybe a more appropriate question for my stage of life would be, “What is it like to meet people who have a preconceived idea of what you’re like?” That is strange.’

She’s beginning to find a political voice, but how far would she go now in opposing Trump? ‘Hopefully I can protest peacefully. I’d rather not go to jail. If it means running for public office at some point I would consider that.

‘It would be a pleasure, a privilege to be able to run for public office. I’ve always imagined that you could be most effective that way, if you had the constitution for it.’

Has she got the constitution for it? ‘Right now I’m still running after a mini-me.’

So it will have to wait until Rose is older, but she’s definitely serious. ‘The few times I’ve been to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and seen how global politics work, I’ve seen that all these dealings that affect the whole world happen in small rooms. It’s not too dissimilar to the industry I’m familiar with.’

Johansson got caught up in a political row over the boycotting of Israeli goods a few years back, stepping down from the charity Oxfam when it emerged that SodaStream, a company she worked with, had a factory in a Jewish settlement on the West Bank.

Scarlett starring in Lucy (2014)

Scarlett Johansson with Jonathan Rhys-Meyers in Match Point - 2005

Scarlett as Black Widow in Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015)

Scarlett's breakout role with Bill Murray in Lost In Translation (2003)

She also had to endure unwanted attention when a man hacked her phone for intimate pictures back in 2011 (and was subsequently jailed). So she’s used to close scrutiny – but Johansson is still thrown when I tell her how animal rights groups took exception to her Washington speech because she was wearing a $2,000 parka with real fox fur around the hood. This is news to her, but they said, how could she speak up for the oppressed when she was wearing a dead animal around her neck?

‘I don’t know. On my coat?’ She glances down at the same coat, lying beside her.

‘Yeah, that is a... that is a good point.’

The friendliness has vanished for a moment, but the truth is she can afford any coat she likes. How does it feel to be ahead of the likes of Cameron Diaz and Julia Roberts in terms of how much her movies make? ‘It gives me confidence in my choices. I’ve been working forever, so with plenty of luck and a lot of experience, I’ve carved out a niche for myself.’

She admits to being reluctant at first to play the lead in the sci-fi film Ghost In The Shell. ‘I’d had my daughter a couple of months before and it just seemed like an enormous undertaking. But something about it was enigmatic and I sat on it and discussed it in therapy,’ she says, laughing. Is she serious? ‘Yeah, it was on my mind.’

Her passion for therapy makes her sound like a character in a Woody Allen movie, which she was in Match Point, Scoop and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Allen is a huge fan and said: ‘It’s very hard to be extra witty around a sexually overwhelming, beautiful young woman who is wittier than you are.’

Ghost In The Shell is a controversial remake of a classic Japanese cyberpunk comic book or manga. Johansson is Major Motoko Kusanagi, a character almost as iconic in Japan as Captain America is in his homeland – and some people are outraged. More than 100,000 people signed a petition demanding that she step down, so does she care what people think?

Scarlett Johansson as the Major in Ghost In The Shell

‘Well of course. But this question is answered in the film. I’m playing a person that is completely identity-less. She is a human brain in a synthetic robot body.’

Johansson wears a silver bodysuit in the film that almost makes her look naked. Why are women in action movies always squeezed into costumes that make them look super-sexy?

‘I don’t know. That’s hard to say because I work alongside guys who wear skintight leather leotards, you know, for work!’

She’s talking about the rest of the Avengers here. ‘You spend all day making jokes about their various codpiece sizes.’

Ghost In The Shell is about people with brains patched into the internet, but Johansson doesn’t even have a Facebook account. When I ask why, she starts talking unexpectedly about the British writer Charlie Brooker and his Channel 4 TV series Black Mirror, with its dystopian view of social media. ‘That show is awesome. It’s like I had a nightmare and it was projected onto the screen!’

What is she afraid of? ‘I’m wary of this habit people have of living a life online separate from their own. A person in my circle of friends posts things that make their life look amazing. One day they’re on a yacht, the next day they’re in St Tropez and I’m like, “Wow!”. I get sucked into it, and yet I know that this person has not been in a great relationship for a long time and has struggles with their mum and is unhappy with their job, whatever. But that part of their life is not put up. There’s a disconnect.’

Hang on, she’s about to scurry through the rain past 100ft-high billboards with images of herself as the Major. Isn’t that the same? Aren’t we all just trying to give ourselves a tiny dose of the glamour she has in extremes?

Scarlett as Griet, a young servant in Girl With A Pearl Earring (2003)

‘Of course the glamour is great and there are glamorous parts of my job, but how can you live any truth if your life is constantly on display?’ She’ll never do a Kim Kardashian and post everything she does online, then?

‘Who wants to live like that? You must just yearn to peruse the aisles in the grocery store, pay a taxi driver or buy underwear, you know what I mean? At least for me there’s a bit of a separation because I don’t have social media, I am a private person and I’m not in your face all the time. You never realise how precious your anonymity is until you don’t have it any more.’

She smiles, the enigmatic smile that has made her one of the most famous women on the planet. And with that the hood goes up and Scarlett Johansson disappears alone out into the anonymous streets of New York.

‘Ghost In The Shell’ is out on March 30