Scarlett Johansson knows how to make an entrance. When the actress whose barely clad backside provided Lost in Translation with its unforgettable opening shot steps out of her sky-blue BMW and into an old-school Hollywood restaurant, she’s sporting a brand-new blonde ’do and a sultry attitude and singing a tune -- Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” -- that catches the attention of every patron in the eatery. “I think I have an admirer,” she says as she slides into a booth, tilting her head to indicate the smitten grin of a waiter serving another table. “I’m going to woo him, then steal his glasses, because they’re really good.”

 

Johansson, 19, doesn't have to exert much effort to grab people's attention these days. With her distinctive performances and husky voice, she's regularly earning raves for her work in such films as Ghost World and The Man Who Wasn't There. But with her role in Sofia Coppola's offbeat comedy Lost in Translation, playing a tourist who shares an unlikely, unconsummated romance with fellow traveler Bill Murray, Johansson launched herself into an entirely different category of stardom. "Suddenly, everybody fell out of the woodwork," she says, "calling to say, 'Hey, long time no speak.' And I'm like, 'Screw you. Where the hell were you when I actually wanted to talk to you?' Old agents tell me, 'Congratulations.' And I'm like, 'Why are you calling me on my personal phone?'"

Lost in Translation, it seems, was merely the warm-up for Johansson's quietly moving turn in Girl With a Pearl Earring. Adapted from Tracy Chevalier's 1999 novel, the stylish period drama casts Johansson as Griet, a 17th-century Dutch peasant who becomes a housemaid of artist Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth) and inadvertently ends up the subject of the Dutch master's most mysterious painting. Griet is forbidden to speak to Vermeer or his family unless first spoken to, providing the notoriously chatty actress the opportunity to carry scene after scene in which she doesn't utter a single line. "I really found a certain freedom in the restriction of speech," says Johansson. "Instead of our screenwriter filling the silences with cheesy dialogue, like 'Oh, I yearn for you,' she just allowed for the silences to happen. Realistically, our characters would never talk to each other -- they couldn't."

"I defy anyone to cast [the role of Griet] better," says the film's director, Peter Webber, for whom Johansson evokes the women of a more recent bygone era. "She's mutated into this insanely glamorous movie star, like the young Lana Turner or Veronica Lake. To have the combination of incredible acting talent and also old-fashioned movie-star charisma -- it's killer."

Fans will note that Girl With a Pearl Earring is only the latest film in which Johansson appears as the younger half of a May-December pairing. ("I have older guys chanting in a circle outside my house," she says with a laugh.) It's a trend that will continue in her next movie, A Love Song for Bobby Long, in which she stars opposite John Travolta as a headstrong girl who returns to New Orleans for her mother's funeral. "I came into work," she says, "and I was like, 'John, I just have to tell you, I've seen Grease a million times, but I saw it last night and thought, "Holy shit, you were, like, the bee's knees."' He was like, 'I was good-looking, wasn't I?' I said, 'Yes, you were. That ass? Oh, yeah.' My perfect boyfriend would be John 30 years ago."