Sketch | Scarlett Johansson

Scarlett Johansson was born in New York City. Her father, Karsten Johansson, is a Danish-born architect originally from Copenhagen, and her paternal grandfather, Ejner Johansson, was a screenwriter and director. Her mother, Melanie Sloan, a producer, comes from an Ashkenazi Jewish family from the Bronx; Sloan's ancestors were Jewish immigrants from both Poland and Minsk in the Russian Empire. She has an older sister, Vanessa, also an actress; an older brother, Adrian; a twin brother, Hunter (who appeared with her in the film Manny & Lo); and an older half-brother, Christian, from her father's first marriage.

Scarlett Johansson Sketch by Abhishek Thamke

Johansson grew up in a household with "little money", and with a mother who was a "film buff". She and her twin brother attended P.S. 41 in the upper-middle-class Greenwich Village neighborhood, in Manhattan, for elementary school. Johansson began her theatrical training by attending and graduating from Professional Children's School in Manhattan in 2002.