Scarlett Johansson grew up on welfare. The Ghost in the Shell star – who was the highest-grossing actor of 2016 – has revealed how her family would live on food stamps when she was a kid and whilst her mum “tried to be a buffer”, it was difficult for them all.
Speaking in a preview clip for her Inside the Actors Studio interview, she said: “We were living on welfare, we were on food stamps. My parents were raising four kids in a low-income household in Manhattan. So, it was a lot. My mom tried to be as much as a buffer as possible with that experience. But by the time my twin brother and I came around, I think my parents’ marriage, it had a lot of strain.”
Meanwhile, Scarlett – who has a two-year-old daughter Rose with her estranged husband Romain Dauriac – previously admitted she found it “grounding” to keep working whilst she was raising her daughter. She said: “Even when I was shooting [ Ghost in the Shell] I was still nursing. That is a very grounding [thing.] If you ever needed to return to yourself, that is a pretty wonderful way to come back to yourself when you go home. You have to leave all that work stuff behind and be able to present with your kid. I am very thankful that’s my reality at the end of the day.”
However, she doesn’t feel motherhood has changed her working life. She explained: “I have a job that’s very advantageous in that way. I can parent and then go do the scene and go back and parent. There’s a bit of back and forth, but it works. [Has it changed what work I do?] It hasn’t but it might in a few years. Again, it’s a job that works with you. I have a freedom that others don’t, so I’m grateful.”
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