Scarlett Johansson Too Sexy For Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Role

October 18, 2011 by Hollywoodite

It must suck to lose roles because you’re too pretty, too sexy, and too many of the potential viewing audience want to see you naked (enough people want to see you naked to make hacking your email worthwhile, in fact).

But that’s what happened to Scarlett Johansson, who lost the Lisbeth Salander role in Girl With the Dragon Tattoo because she’s too obviously sexy… for a role that needed to be asexual for the explicit sexual violence to be portrayed correctly. That’s according to director of the English-language remake, David Fincher, who revealed his laboured casting process during one of his many domineering moments in the Rooney Mara Vogue interview.

“Look,” said Fincher, “We saw some amazing people… We flew in people from New Zealand and Swaziland and all over the place…”

“Scarlett Johansson was great. It was a great audition, I’m telling you. But the thing with Scarlett is, you can’t wait for her to take her clothes off [he pauses] I keep trying to explain this. Salander should be like E.T. If you put E.T. dolls out before anyone had seen the movie, they would say, “What is this little squishy thing?’ Well, you know what? When he hides under the table and he grabs the Reese’s Pieces, you love him! It has to be like that.” – via Vogue.

Incidentally, this was the second role for which Johansson was keen to get naked and sexual on screen when she was denied by the director. She also offered to go topless for a sex scene with Ewan McGregor for 2005′s The Island, directed by Michael Bay, when Bay said no because the film needed to remain PG-13 not R.