Scarlett Johansson is a household name: whether it was from her role in the Marvel Universe, her scene-stealing turn in Lost in Translation, or even playing the devastating divorcee in Marriage Story, we all know the actress as a powerhouse in Hollywood.
However, life was not always easy for the A-lister, who grew up in New York to struggling parents. Read on to discover all about ScarJo’s blended family.
Scarlett and her mother MelanieĀ© Evan Agostini
ScarJo’s humble beginnings
Her father is Danish architect Karsten Johansson, and her mother is a New York native and producer named Melanie Sloan.
Scarlett opened up about her upbringing on an Inside the Actors Studio episode in 2017, saying, “My parents were raising four kids in a low-income household in Manhattan. So, it was a lot.”
“We were living on welfare, we were on food stamps.”
Despite the tough times, her mother did her best to shield the children from the realities of their lives; Scarlett told Entertainment Tonight that her mom “tried to be as much as a buffer as possible with that experience. It was a lot.”
“She would take us to see Broadway plays when she could afford it,” she told Variety in 2023. “We’d line up in the half-price ticket line and then go see a show.”
Sadly, Melanie and Karsten split in 1997, when Scarlett was still a teen; while she and her twin brother Hunter stayed in New York with their father, their mother moved to California.