Scarlett Johansson credits Robert Redford with inspiring her directing style
Written by WorldOneFm on May 17, 2025
Scarlett Johansson has credited Robert Redford with inspiring her directing style on her feature debut Eleanor the Great.
The Avengers actress may have been directed by Redford when she was a child star almost 30 years ago, but she still remembers his “actor-focused” approach on the set of 1998’s The Horse Whisperer, which he also starred in.
“He was so patient and would take the time to familiarise me with where my character was at that moment, what happened, where I was coming from in the story. He would tell me the story, the whole story, all the way up until that point. It was so helpful,” she praised in an interview with Deadline. “It was so insightful, too, because I was also a young actor. I was working on a big film, and a lot was going on, and he would take the time.”
The 40-year-old actress, who has worked with many different directors over the decades, also learned a valuable lesson about tailoring her directing style to each person thanks to Jon Favreau’s advice on the set of 2010’s Iron Man 2.
“I remember in a break, I said, ‘How do you do it? How do you know how to work with all these different people?'” she recalled. “He said it’s almost like being a therapist in a way where you understand the language that someone else is speaking and how they need to communicate to get what you need out of them. It’s about identifying that and adjusting yourself in that way.”
Johansson noted that the ability to direct actors is “innately” in her because she’s been a performer for so long.
“As far as the acting, the sensitivity to actors, and what their process is, is something that I obviously have learned over 30 years. So that part is not necessarily absorbing how other directors do, but it’s kind of baked in because it’s a part of my DNA at this point,” she stated.
Eleanor the Great stars June Squibb as a 90-year-old woman who moves to New York and strikes up an unlikely friendship with a student. It will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on 20 May.
