David Fincher Didn’t Cast Scarlett Johansson in This Film Because ‘You Couldn’t Wait to Take Her Clothes off’
Scarlett Johansson was once in the running for David Fincher’s adaptation of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. But although the actor gave an above average screening, Fincher didn’t cast her because of Johansson’s attractiveness.
Scarlett Johansson once auditioned for ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’
Fincher eventually ended up picking Rooney Mara as hacker Lisbeth Salander in Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It was a role that Mara shared she was determined to fight for after being considered for the movie for quite some time.
“I was ready to throw down. I was thinking, You either think I can be this girl or you don’t, but I need to move on with my life,” Mara once told Vogue (via The Hollywood Reporter).
Fincher had a long and difficult casting process before choosing Mara, having to wade through many qualified candidates. One of those candidates was Scarlett Johansson, who Fincher confided gave an impressive audition. But Johansson’s looks seemed to have cost her the role in the end.
“We flew in people from New Zealand and Swaziland and all over the place,” he said. “Look, we saw some amazing people. Scarlett Johansson was great. It was a great audition, I’m telling you. But the thing with Scarlett is, you can’t wait for her to take her clothes off.”
Fincher perhaps felt he needed another actor who could portray Lisbeth Salander’s more unconventional look.
“I keep trying to explain this,” he added. “Salander should be like E.T. If you put E.T. dolls out before anyone had seen the movie, they would say, ‘What is this little squishy thing?’ Well, you know what? When he hides under the table and he grabs the Reese’s Pieces, you love him! It has to be like that.”
Scarlett Johansson was frustrated that she kept losing out on roles because of her looks
Girl With the Dragon Tattoo might not have been the only film she’d been turned away from because of her appearance. Johansson revealed that being thought of as too pretty for roles was a common theme of her auditions. Although she understood where directors were coming from, she believed she wasn’t being given a chance to truly disappear into her roles.
“That’s always an unfortunate thing to figure out, ‘Why can’t you see?!’ For me, I would imagine when casting someone, you would want to challenge yourself in some way. It is so interesting to see actors transform. There are certainly plenty of times when I am definitely not sexy,” she once said according to Daily Mail.
But ironically, Johansson didn’t see herself as a ‘sexy’ actor, and remarked that she really hadn’t played those kinds of roles in her career.
“Of course you could say the characters I played maybe in Match Point, maybe in Black Dahlia [are sexy]. But the characters I play aren’t really traditionally sexy, I don’t think,” she once told Mirror. “I think it’s probably a reaction to the fact that I’m curvy and confident about it, maybe. But I don’t think I was particularly sexy in Lost in Translation or particularly sexy in The Other Boleyn Girl.”
Scarlett Johansson never wanted to be a sex symbol
Johansson confided that her goal was never to be a ‘sexy’ actor. Instead, the Black Widow star wanted to take a more serious approach to her career.
“I wanted to be a character actor,” she once told The Independent. “Those are the actors I mostly admire. I think women that are curvy can be pigeonholed in that bombshell thing. It’s not like I actively look for sexy roles. It’s not a requirement that my character be pretty and delicate. I never think about my character being sexy, unless that’s written in.”
