2025 was a special year for Scarlett Johansson. Not only did she embark on a major new franchise journey with Jurassic World Rebirth, she became the world's highest-grossing actor in the process. From her long stint in the MCU and timeless classics like Lost in Translation to less mainstream gems such as Under the Skin and Ghost World, Scarlett Johansson's impressive movie career has been as varied as it has been consistent.
Johansson's movie debut came at only 9 years old thanks to the infamous Rob Reiner flop North. As a child star, she continued to appear in feature-length movies alongside some of Hollywood's greats, but Lost in Translation marked the moment the world finally sat up and took notice of her talent. Johansson went from strength to strength thereafter, but not before accumulating a few surprising credits as an up-and-comer.
Scarlett Johansson Played The Main Character's Sister In Home Alone 3
So synonymous is Macaulay Culkin with Home Alone, it's often overlooked that the franchise consists of more than his two movies. Indeed, Home Alone has a whopping six entries in its canon, with the Culkin-free era starting in 1997 with the release of Home Alone 3
Culkin was in the middle of a 9-year break from Hollywood at the time, resulting in Home Alone 3, replacing the McCallister family with the Pruitt family and installing Alex D. Linz as trap-setter in chief. Scarlett Johansson was cast as Molly, sister of the main character. As with other siblings in Home Alone movies, Johannson's Molly gets very little screen time. The clue is in the title – for the premise to work, Alex has to be home… alone.
Johansson plays the typical annoying older sibling who eventually praises her brother for protecting the family home. It's hardly a standout part, but then again, it wasn't written as one. As a forgettable character in a forgettable movie, it's no surprise that Scarlett Johansson's contribution to the Home Alone saga is so often ignored.
Scarlett Johansson Took A Major Career Step Just One Year After Home Alone 3
If Home Alone 3 was the kind of role more likely to become a question in a trivia quiz than advance a young actor's career, Scarlett Johansson's next movie was the exact opposite.
Released only six months after Home Alone 3, Robert Redford's The Horse Whisperer put Johansson in a prominent dramatic role as a young girl rediscovering her confidence after a bad fall from her horse. Johansson's performance is one of maturity and nuance as she holds her own against cinematic greats like Redford, Kristin Scott Thomas and Sam Neill. To think that, not even a year prior, she had been reduced to a background part in one of history's most unwanted sequels in quite something.
From there, Scarlett Johansson's career took off. Ghost World followed three years later, then Lost in Translation two years after that, and the rest is history.
