Scarlett Johansson failed to get her audition for Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity” off the ground.
The ‘Under the Skin’ star recounted Entertainment tonight about auditioning for Cuarón’s Oscar-winning 2013 film that ultimately starred Sandra Bullock as an astronaut whose spacecraft was destroyed.
Johansson revealed that he had “done a lot of weird auditions” and cited “Gravity” as one of them.
“I auditioned for the movie ‘Gravity,’ where Sandra Bullock is amazing, but I had to put on, like, the whole space suit, and pretend I was kind of floating in space.” Johansson said, “even though I was just sitting in a chair with a helmet on.”
The ‘Asteroid City’ actress recently told Variety that she’s feeling ‘hopeless’ after losing ‘Gravity’ amid a string of ‘unfulfilling’ roles.
“I was turned down for two roles: the first one was ‘Iron Man 2’ and then the other was ‘Gravity’ by Alfonso Cuarón,” said Johansson. “I had longed for that role. It was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back. I felt really frustrated and hopeless. Like, ‘Am I doing the job right?’”
He continued: “The job I was being offered seemed deeply unsatisfying. I think I’ve been offered every Marilyn Monroe script ever. I was like, ‘Is this the end of the road creatively?’”
The star admitted that it was “hard to get out of that box” of playing an on-screen hottie. “And I’ve done movies like ‘He’s Not That Into You’ and movies that have continued that narrative,” Johansson said. “I haven’t been able to make any progress.”
Spike Jonze’s “Her” helped “rekindle” Johansson’s “passion” for acting. “Suddenly it was like, ‘I still love this job,'” she said. “I felt less anxious.”
Johansson began her career with lead roles in ‘Lost in Translation’ and ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ around the age of 19.
“I was stepping into my womanhood and learning about my desirability and sexuality,” Johansson said. “I was kind of primed to be what you call a bombshell actor. I was playing the other woman and the object of desire and suddenly I was cornered in this place. I couldn’t get out of it.”
He continued, “It would be easy to sit across from someone in that situation and say, ‘It’s working.’ But for that kind of bomb, you know, that burns bright and fast and then it’s done and you have no opportunity beyond that. It was an interesting and strange conundrum to be in, but he really came back to working on it and trying to carve out his place in different projects and work in large ensembles.
At the New York premiere of “Asteroid City” Tuesday night, director Wes Anderson praised Johansson as a “big movie star playing a good person,” referring to her character Midge Campbell, a mediocre actress stuck in a city in the California desert during a quarantine.
