Scarlett Johansson — actress with roots in the Russian Empire
Scarlett Johansson was born in New York City on 22 November 1984, one of four children of Karsten Johansson, a Danish-born architect from Copenhagen, and Melanie Sloan, a New Yorker who later worked as a film producer. She has a twin brother, Hunter. Her paternal grandfather, Ejner Johansson, was a Danish screenwriter and director.
Her mother's side of the family is Jewish and came to New York from the western provinces of the Russian Empire. The family name was originally Schlamberg. Her maternal great-grandfather, Saul Schlamberg, emigrated to New York around 1910 from a small town in the Warsaw region of Russian-ruled Poland; the surname later became Sloan. Her maternal grandmother, Dorothy, née Chodosh, a bookkeeper and schoolteacher whom Johansson regarded as her closest friend, was born in New York to Jewish emigrants from Minsk. Her great-uncle Phil Schlamberg, a fighter pilot, is recorded as the last American airman killed in combat in the Second World War, in August 1945.
On the PBS series Finding Your Roots in 2017, she learned that the brother of her great-grandfather and members of his family had remained in Poland and were killed in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust.
She began acting as a child, appearing off-Broadway at eight and in films from the mid-1990s, including Manny & Lo (1996) and The Horse Whisperer (1998). Ghost World (2001) and Lost in Translation (2003), for which she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress, established her as an adult lead, followed by Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003), Match Point (2005), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) and, as a voice alone, Her (2013).
From Iron Man 2 in 2010 to her own film, Black Widow, in 2021 she played Natasha Romanoff in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a role that made her one of the highest-grossing film actors of her generation. In 2020 she received two Academy Award nominations in the same year, for Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit. On stage she won a Tony Award in 2010 for Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge.
In 2025 she made her debut as a feature director with Eleanor the Great.
"Great-grandparents from the Warsaw region (Russian Poland), c. 1910, and from Minsk to New York"
Migration storyTracing the roots — Minsk and Grójec (Belarus, Poland)
Her mother, Melanie Sloan, comes from a Jewish family originally named Schlamberg. Her maternal great-grandfather Saul Schlamberg emigrated to New York around 1910 from the Warsaw region of Russian-ruled Poland, and her grandmother Dorothy's parents came from Minsk.
Maternal great-grandfather Saul (Sol) Schlamberg, from the Warsaw–Grójec area, emigrated c. 1910; maternal grandmother Dorothy (née Chodosh) was born in New York to Jewish emigrants from Minsk. Traced on PBS's Finding Your Roots (2017).
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Minsk and Grójec (Belarus, Poland). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.