Scarlett Johansson: we live in a new age that needs new love stories, and new presences to tell them. Here is an actress born for these roles

A case can be made that Scarlett Johansson is the most exquisitely gifted young actress currently working in American films. After her fine adolescent performances in Manny & Lo (1996) and The Horse Whisperer (1998), Johansson matured swiftly as the more conformist and sarcastic of the two teen provocatrices in Ghost World (2001) and as Birdy, the supposedly prim pianist in The Man Who Wasn't There (2001).

Now, in two new movies, Johansson delicately pries open the souls of two very different girls falling in love with older men who reciprocate her feelings. In Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, which opens this month, she is dreamily solipsistic as married Charlotte, who, marooned in a Tokyo hotel, is drawn to an equally alienated movie star, Bob (Bill Murray), In Peter Webber's Girl With a Pearl Earring, due later this year, she personifies restraint as the innocent but insightful maid who--according to Tracy Chevalier's source novel--inspired Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth) to paint the eponymous masterpiece in s 17th-century Dutch household torn by domestic strife.

Johansson has the range, passion, and sensitivity of a great performer, but since she's only 18, it's s relief to find she's also a larky kid.

GRAHAM FULLER: Hello, Scarlett. You're in New Orleans rehearsing for A Love Song for Bobby Long, right?

SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Yeah, though right now I'm very full of cheeseburger, and I just watched Willy Wonka. It's one of my favorite films.

GF: Has New Orleans cast its voodoo on you?

SJ: I've been a lazy bum and not done anything at all, except for sit around and paint my toenails. But I can definitely smell the majestic, thick air when I go out. All these big things are advertised--big-ass beers and "bottomless dancers guaranteed'--but I'd just like to go and hang with the alligators.

GF: You're extraordinary as Charlotte in Lost in Translation. How did she evolve?

SJ: Sofia [Coppola] knew she wanted Bill [Murray] and me to do the film and that she wanted to set it in Tokyo, which is a character in its own right. She didn't explain the complexity of the relationship--just that these people were lost, and found themselves in each other. Then she sent me the first draft, which was about 75 pages--pretty short. I figured it'd be [fleshed] out when we got there. And then Bill hopped onboard the Tokyo Expressway, and we were making the movie. I had no idea what to expect when I got there. It was so foreign, and I felt lost physically. And I suppose my state of mind was a little foggy.

People have asked me if Charlotte is really Sofia. I would never say it's her. All I can say is that the story is close to Sofia's heart, and I hope that comes through in the character. Of course, I realized when we were making the film that Charlotte and Bob are desperately in love. But if they had consummated their love, it would have left them with these complicated emotions.

GF: Was Bill tender toward you--I mean in the gentlest possible way--during the filming, as Bob is to Charlotte?

SJ: Not really. The key to it is tenderness, but our real relationship was a working relationship. Bill is like Bob in the sense that he's sarcastic and outgoing and puts on a big show for everybody. And I suppose I'm like Charlotte in the way I'm reserved with my own feelings. Not to say that I'm not a loud obnoxious shit on the set--which I've been told I am--I mean "reserved" in terms of my relationship with Bill.

GF: What does Bill say to you in that final shot of you together?

SJ: [laughs] I'm not going to be obnoxious and say, "You're a nosy journalist for asking, and it's for you to find out," although it really is. Bill said a lot of things to me, silly things. But whatever he said filled me with emotion. I was a mess; I didn't expect to get that sad.

GF: Much of Lost in Translation is about you moping in your room. What was going through your head in those scenes?

SJ: Different things, I suppose. Sofia would say, "You know when you're trying to cheer yourself up and you're kind of bummed out? And then something stupid happens, like you stub your toe, and you just sit there and cry and laugh at the same time because it's like you're such a klutz, but it fucking hurts so bad?" She would just lead me through it. It's great to see those moments captured on film because they're so familiar.

GF: I get the sense you're very serious about acting. The nuances you reveal are not those of an actor whose mind is on all the other stuff that goes with being in movies--the self-image, the celebrity. You clearly lose yourself inside your characters. Is acting a vocation for you?

SJ: [pause] Being a movie star is a quality that somebody sort of embodies, and being a celebrity is something that people give to you. It has to do with being recognizable, as opposed to something that people recognize in you. I just hope to make good movies. I know that sounds simple, but it's true. I love everything about the process of making films: the rehearsing and performing and the messages you can convey--not that everything has to have a message or that it's something I look for.