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Scarlett Johansson: At 14 I was told my face looked like the surface of a volcano
The actress suffered from crippling acne for years, before finding what actually works
By any metric, Scarlett Johansson has a stunningly successful career. The highest-paid actress in Hollywood for two years running, in 2018 and 2019, thanks to her work in the Marvel franchise, she’s also starred in some of the most memorable art-house films of the past two decades, from 2003’s Lost in Translation to 2019’s Jojo Rabbit.
She can now add beauty entrepreneur to her résumé. This week sees the launch of The Outset, her line of eight “plant-powered, radically gentle” skincare products.
Note that knowing juxtaposition of “radical” and “gentle”. For years, Johansson’s skin strategy was the opposite of gentle, and that’s what caused her so much angst. During her teens and much of her adult life, Johansson suffered from severe acne. That’s not a small thing, especially when you appear on a giant screen for work.
Like millions of people, she worked her way through scores of products and fads. She had access to the best dermatologists and beauty lines, yet if anything they just made things worse.
“I was using all these different acids and retinols and essentially damaging my skin barrier, which perpetuated a cycle of skin problems for me,” she explains. “I didn’t know anything about the skin barrier then. My skin was beyond irritated – stripped out and stressed. I tried supplements and anti-inflammatory diets, I cut out sugar, and while all that may have helped my stomach, none of it was having much effect on my skin.”
This is all hard to compute when talking to the clear-skinned, diminutive figure via Zoom from her home in New York. Blonde hair pulled back into a casual ponytail, blue eyes somehow intensified by the oversized heavy black prescription glasses she’s wearing, she looks every inch the off-duty Hollywood star, down to the perfectly calibrated chic-casual stripy Elder Statesman sweater she’s wearing.
“I was so over it,” she continues, her famous husky voice sounding weary. “I had this moment, eight or nine years ago, when I was working on a film; I was pregnant and I thought, ‘I need to solve this. What can I do?’ ”
She put away her toners, tonics and strippers and tried something radical: putting moisture into her skin. “You know, making it balanced. I just got rid of everything I thought could be irritating it. I did a light exfoliation every day with a brush and started using a very simple noncomedogenic moisturiser.” The results were almost instant. “Within seven days.”
As her skin improved, Johansson wondered why, with so many beauty brands out there, there wasn’t one that answered her needs – and whether she might be the person to launch it. She did her research. “Then I asked a friend if he knew anyone who could help me actually bring my ideas to market in an intentional way – and that’s how I met Kate. We connected on our skin woes.”
Kate Foster, a California-born entrepreneur in her 40s, had suffered similar skin problems to Johansson. “I’d had a baby,” recounts Foster. “It was like, ooh, I’m getting older; everyone told me to use retinols, so that’s what I did, with the end result that my face became so red and inflamed, it was a completely different colour from my neck. I had a major breakout right before my wedding.” She’s humorous about it now, but it was anything but funny at the time. Foster and Johansson immediately bonded over this “simple idea of going back to basics and moisturising the skin in a very gentle way”.
This sounds so eminently sensible – the kind of thing our mothers did – it’s astonishingly weird that we lost sight of it. But we did, and our skin is paying the price. Adult acne in women has increased 10 per cent worldwide over the past 10 years, according to a 2022 review published in the International Journal of Dermatology. Lockdown factors such as stress and time to experiment with multiple products created an even more volatile environment for skin.
A skin meltdown is bad at any time, but before a red-carpet event? “I know some celebrities use cortisol shots to get rid of spots before a big event,” says Johansson. “But that never really worked for me and I was told they can cause scars.”
She sought out “the most amazing make-up artists to cover up my skin”. They did an extraordinary job. Her skin always seemed to glow. “Shadows and fog,” she says. “I love make-up.”
On the set of The Horse Whisperer in 1998, aged 14, she remembers a sympathetic make-up artist telling her that her face looked like the surface of a volcano. “She wasn’t being mean,” Johansson clarifies. “She was also suffering from skin problems. But I became obsessed. Skin was such a topic of conversation with my sister and my friends. We were always talking about how to improve the texture.”
Johansson still loves a bold lipstick, as we can see from her radiant turns last month on the red carpet in Cannes, where she was promoting her latest film, Asteroid City. “I always carry one in my purse. It’s an instant pick-me-up.”
“She’s amazing at doing her make-up,” says Foster, admiringly, of Johansson. “I can’t do my hair, though,” retorts Johansson. Their mutual fascination with beauty is a version of conversations I’ve heard many intelligent friends have. They laugh when I ask if this is the first step to building a Goop-style empire of wellbeing. “That’s not a bad place to be,” says Johansson. “I would love for this brand to be an essential for as many people as possible. We’ve put a lot into every product and the development. I can’t envision that we’re ever going to have 100 SKUs [industry speak for products], but we’d love to be a legacy brand that lasts.”
“It’s all about moderation,” adds Foster. “We’ve both learnt that none of this has to be complicated.”
Johansson sounds a model of moderation. Having worked out hard with weights in a gym when she was preparing for her Marvel role, she now prefers something “less intense. I think your muscle fibre changes as you age. I’ve done a lot of rehabilitative exercises in Pilates, and these days I find it gives me more energy than working with heavy weights.”
As for the puritanical regime a Hollywood star is meant to lead. “Obviously, with two young children [her eight-year-old daughter and 20-month-old son], I don’t get enough sleep. And I love to cook. Also, my husband [comedian Colin Jost] and I like to go out to dinner and drink wine.”
Both Johansson and Foster agree The Outset isn’t about chasing an outdated notion of perfection. This sense of balance chimes with how the beauty industry is evolving. Having acted since she was a child, Johansson has an unparalleled view on whether Hollywood is also moving towards accepting a more rounded view of ageing.
“It’s definitely a conversation that’s being had in a way it never was before,” she says. “It was so extreme in the other direction for, like, forever. We’re seeing a shift where the industry can look outside the box in terms of perfection. I see that more on TV, for sure. Actresses are playing characters that are fully realised. They look more natural and real and the age they are.”
Is that the beauty industry leading the entertainment industry, or the other way round? “I’m not sure,” she says.
Either way, it’s good, you sense, to be part of them both.
The Outset range will available in the UK from Cult Beauty