Scarlett Johansson is one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, and has been for the past several decades. After breaking out in the industry in the late ’90s through such projects as Ghost World and Home Alone 3, Johansson really made her mark on Hollywood in 2003’s rom-com-drama Lost in Translation, which earned director Sofia Coppola the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and an Oscar nom for her co-star Bill Murray.
Despite not landing any Academy Award recognition herself, Johansson’s performance as Charlotte, a college graduate vacationing in Tokyo who strikes up an unexpected connection with Murray’s aging actor Bob, a fellow American who happens to be staying in the same hotel, earned critical acclaim — the actress’ maturity and ability to embody a character wise beyond her years received particular applause. But how old was Johansson in Lost in Translation?
There was a 35-year age gap between Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray in Lost in Translation
Although the character of Charlotte is in her early 20s, Scarlett Johansson herself was only 17 when making Lost in Translation. Bill Murray, meanwhile, was 52 years old, meaning there was a 35-year age gap between the two leads, who develop a romance of sorts across the film. In recent years, as Hollywood’s tendency to pair aging leading men up with much younger leading ladies has faced closer scrutiny, Lost in Translation has come under the spotlight for what is now seen as a controversial pairing.
Sofia Coppola addressed the controversy herself when reflecting on the film for the 20th anniversary of its release in September 2023. When admitting to Rolling Stone that her kids were taken aback by the characters’ extreme age difference upon seeing the movie for the first time, Coppola was asked whether she thought Lost in Translation‘s central dynamic hits different in contemporary times than it did in the early 2000s. Coppola admitted that the fact Charlotte and Bob are from different generations is a major theme of the film’s story:
“Yeah … I don’t know. I’m not going to think about it. I was just doing my thing at the time it was made. I did notice that watching it with my kids, because they’re teenagers and they were like, “What’s going on with that?” But Bill is so lovable and charming. Part of the story is about how you can have romantic connections that aren’t sexual or physical. You can have crushes on people where it isn’t that kind of thing. Part of the idea was that you can have connections where you can’t be together for various reasons because you’re at different points in life.”
Johansson herself, meanwhile, said much the same thing when questioned by Yahoo! Entertainment about whether Bob and Charlotte’s relationship could be retold today, defending their dynamic as two Americans abroad who form an unique bond as a “timeless” tale:
“It’s a relationship between too people and I think it’s sort of timeless in that way. You know, I think the relationship, the way those two characters affect one another, is really profound, and I don’t know if there’s any, you know, you watch it and you don’t judge it. It’s just two people who come together in this circumstance that’s foreign, they’re out of their body, they’re out of what’s familiar to them, and it’s because of that that they connect with one another. You feel like if they met any other place or any other time they wouldn’t be as vulnerable.”