(Credits: Far Out / Dreamworks)
Sun 18 January 2026 1:00, UK
If a director were offered the chance to cast the highest-grossing lead actor in cinema history in their movie, then common sense would usually prevail. However, despite Scarlett Johansson desperately craving a part, the director flat-out refused to give it to her.
That’s not to say that Johansson should be handed everything on a silver platter, simply because her movies have raked in billions upon billions of dollars at the box office, she’s been a certified A-lister for the better part of 20 years, and she’s one of the few actors to earn two Academy Award nominations in the same year.
However, she did audition and was considered one of, if not the front-runner, in industry circles. As should always be the case, though, the mastermind behind the camera had the final say, and regardless of how much she wanted it and how good her screen test was, he simply wasn’t having it.
Johansson was far from the only talented actor who threw their hat into the ring to play Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo remake, with the project sparking one of the most hotly-contested casting races in recent memory, with countless big names in the mix at one time or another.
Eva Green, Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Lawrence, Carey Mulligan, Natalie Portman, Kristen Stewart, Evan Rachel Wood, Mia Wasikowska, and Sarah Snook were just some of the names rumoured to be in the running, but Johansson didn’t even make it down to the final four before Rooney Mara was cast.
Snook, Sophie Lowe, and Léa Seydoux were the other three contenders on the final shortlist, and Fincher even managed to ignite some controversy when he suggested that the Marvel Cinematic Universe veteran didn’t get the job because she was too hot, saying, “The thing with Scarlett is, you can’t wait for her to take her clothes off.”
Mercifully, she clarified that misogyny wasn’t the reason. “That’s not exactly how it went,” Johansson told Howard Stern. Instead, she shared that Fincher told her she needed to be “totally uncaring” of herself to make a suitable Salander, and he didn’t believe that she had it in her.
“I said, ‘I will. I can be that person,’” she added. “And he was like, ‘No, you can’t’. I really, really wanted that felt, because I felt I had something to contribute to it, and I think Fincher just had a different vision for that character, and Rooney Mara is, honestly, so perfect in it.”
It’s a small positive that Fincher didn’t hire Johansson because he thought the pervs in the audience would be frothing at the mouth to see her get her kit off, but when she insisted that she was more than capable of disappearing into the role, he disagreed and told her that she didn’t stand a chance.
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