Bill Murray ‘Was in a Hard Place’ During ‘Lost in Translation,’ Says Scarlett Johansson
Bob Harris, the morose movie star played by Scarlett Johansson) who’s abandoned in Tokyo and just as lonesome as he is.
When Johansson — only 17! — made Lost in Translation, she found herself just as isolated and desolate as her character, Charlotte. Unlike Charlotte, however, she didn’t fall into a meaningful friendship with her older male counterpart, despite being a fan of Murray films like What About Bob? and Groundhog Day. “Bill was in a hard place,” she told Vanity Fair. “Everybody was on tenterhooks around him, including our director and the full crew, because he was dealing with his… stuff.”
It was the first time Johansson had worked with an actor in that kind of “headspace,” she said. Everyone’s attention was on Murray, leaving the actress to cope with her loneliness on her own. “I’m pretty proud of how I handled myself. I really just did the work, you know? It’s a good tactic for pushing through stuff.”
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Murray itted to critic Elvis Mitchell that he’s done plenty of damage to people, both in his personal and professional lives. Playing miserable a-holes like Bob Harris, he explained, is one way that he punishes himself for his sins. “It’s unconscious damage, but it’s some sort of penance to play them and to show that, you know, to show accepting responsibility for it,” he said.
It can’t be fun to play guys like Broken Flowers’ Don Johnston, an aging Lothario who travels America apologizing to women he’s hurt in the past, or On the Rocks’ Felix Keane, an emotionally distant father trying to relate to his adult daughter. “I was answering for a lot of things through that role,” Murray told Mitchell.
Getting paid handsomely to work out your issues on screen doesn’t seem like much of a punishment. But maybe it worked — Johansson said Murray seems to have turned a corner. She caught up with him at Saturday Night Live’s 50th birthday bash and was impressed with his warm demeanor. “He’s such a different person now,” she explained. “I think life has humbled him.”
He wasn’t acting so humbled when he fondled that crew person while making 2022’s Being Mortal. “Certainly, yes,” Johansson itted. “That was really bad. But I also know COVID was a hard thing for him. Life, all these things have led up to him being held able for that kind of behavior.
“But you know what? How wonderful that people can change.”