Staying professional, not getting personal

She plays Silken Floss, one of many femmes fatale, in "The Spirit," a comic book come to life by Frank Miller that opened on Christmas. Initially she thought Floss was underwritten, but she met Miller anyway because she loved his previous comic book creations, "Sin City" and "300," both of which were made into movies. He won her over with his excitement about the project. "His visual aesthetic was so rich and fresh and dark and quirky," she says.

The role is stylized in the extreme, quite unlike her other performances, but she says her preparation doesn't differ much. "Actors, we sit and we stew," she says of the process. Just as important is working with, and off of, other actors. "Sam's the most professional man I've ever worked with, he's incredible," she says of Jackson. "It was easy, because we both came to set prepared, we knew what we were doing, we had a lot of room to be very humongous about the whole thing."

In summer's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," the characters played by Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz form an intimate relationship with Johansson's Cristina. "They have methods to their madness," she says of her costars. "They spend time living as the characters, improvising and just trying stuff out. So I indulged in that with them, and it was really nice."

Her next film, "He's Just Not That Into You," is due out in February. She found a different kind of inspiration on that set, thanks to the producers, Nancy Juvonen and Drew Barrymore.

"They make movies that they like, that they're proud of, that people love, that are entertaining," she explains. "I would love to be able to do that someday, have a production company and encourage other directors and writers to follow their vision." And like many actors before and to come, she wants to direct.

Unlike most, she's also excited about aging in the business. "I look forward to the opportunity that it will bring" to play rich, complex roles, she says of the years ahead. "I feel like the hype that comes with being young in the industry will kind of dissipate and that there are some really good roles in my future. Then again, I say that as an actor who thinks every job is their last job."

She's had time off from work lately, but she wasn't completely unemployed. Johansson spent last summer planning a wedding, in secret. "It was my mission to have a moment of privacy, to do something for myself," she says. "I was happy with the results of that." She was able to pull it off so effectively that reports about it didn't come out until days later, and not one picture has hit the tabloids. That's nothing to sneeze at.

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