Q&A: Scarlett Johansson

(CBS News) Scarlett Johansson built a loyal following with roles in movies like 2003's "Lost in Translation," where she starred opposite Bill Murray. The question now is whether all those movie fans will follow her to the Broadway theater. That's where Anthony Mason caught up with her for some Questions and Answers:

Beating up bad guys last summer as the Black Widow was part of a career transition for one of Hollywood's greatest sex symbols. The next step will take Scarlett Johansson from the sound stage to the Broadway stage:

"Sometimes you wander around the theater to think?" Mason asked.

"Well, I like to be on the stage when there's nobody out there," she replied.

For the next two-and-a-half months she'll be at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. "It's a beautiful theater," Johansson said. "You know, I don't really spend a lot of time in the house. I like to be up there."

The 28-year-old actress is taking on one of theatre's classic roles: Maggie in Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

"Even after I was committed to doing it, it weighed on me like a ball and chain," Johansson said. She said what attracted her to the part was "that it was terrifyingly challenging, and I didn't know how to do it."

But eager to move beyond the ingenue roles that made her a movie star, Johansson has taken on the part of an ambitious Southern belle trying to hold onto her decaying marriage.

"It is intense. But it's liberating."

Johansson reportedly is earning $40,000 a week plus a percentage of the box office - which means the show needs to sell a lot of tickets.

Johansson read the sign in the lobby: "This performance is sold out. But unfortunately, it's facing us."

"What's it say on the other side?" Mason asked.

"Yeah, it's like free tickets."

Even in previews, her name on the marquee has made "Cat" one of the hottest tickets on Broadway.

"Your fame means that your name has been reduced to acronym that everybody uses."

"That's terrible," she laughed. "It's so terrible. I hate that name. It's so crazy."

"Does anybody call you ScarJo at home?" Mason asked.

"No! No. Hopefully it's gonna go away sometime."

This is not Johansson's first appearance on Broadway. In 2010 she won a Tony Award for her performance in Arthur Miller's "A View From the Bridge."

"I read that after that play you said to yourself, 'I'm not going to do another play,'" Mason said.

"I think it's kind of what I imagine it must be like to give childbirth, and you sort of forget all the pain," she laughed. "You just remember this beautiful prize you hold."

A prize Johansson - who grew up in New York - long dreamed of. The daughter of a Danish architect and a mother who for many years managed her career, she made her stage debut in 1993 in an Off-Broadway play called "Sophistry."

She was in third grade. In the Playbill it said: "She loves animals, singing, tap dancing, and dedicates this performance to Frank Sinatra and Grandma."

"I LOVE Frank Sinatra.," Johansson said.

"Even in 3rd grade?"

"I was obsessed with Frank Sinatra. Obsessed!"

Johansson said she has wanted to act her whole life. "Always, as far as I can remember. I was a singing, dancing queen in my mind, and I started auditioning for theater, Broadway, everything. 'Annie.' 'Les Mis.'

"I had a very deep, husky voice, so all those kid parts, you know, I'd open my mouth it was like Ethel Merman, you know what I mean? I mean it just did not match the pigtails and the overalls."

"When they'd respond that way to your voice when you were a kid, how did you react to that?"

"You know, you can go two ways, especially as a kid actor. You can either be forever wounded by the constant rejection; or, you become incredibly thick-skinned, more determined and competitive, in a healthy sort of way."

"Which is what you did?" Mason asked.

"I think I did. And also my mother was extremely supportive of me and never made me feel - like, it was always their loss, you know?"

If her voice cost her roles on the stage, she soon discovered it was an asset in movie auditions. "Everybody thought it was so unique in film, and so that's why I started doing film."

She was just nine when she made her movie debut in Rob Reiner's comedy "North" in 1994. But she really got Hollywood's attention when she played a teenage amputee in Robert Redford's "The Horse Whisperer."

By 17 she'd landed her first adult role, in Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation," playing a lonely 25-year-old newlywed who meets a lonely, aging film star in Tokyo.

"My job was just to fall in love with Bill Murray, that's all," she said.

"Was that difficult?"

"No comment."

Johansson said that what people respond to most in Murray's dramatic work is that he is "surprisingly vulnerable and touching. And when he is that way, he is very easy to fall in love with, as I remember."

Just six days after filming "Lost in Translation," Johansson began work on "Girl With a Pearl Earring." Suddenly she was hot.

Director Woody Allen was so taken with Johansson he cast her in three films, including "Match Point."

"He said a number of things about you, one of which was that you were 'sexually overwhelming,'" Mason said.

"Yeah, right."

"What do you think about the whole sex symbol thing that's been built up around you?"

"I don't know. It's hard to have a perspective on it, I suppose. But certainly that was never my intention. I'm not always going to be a sex symbol in that kind of, you know, I won't always have to deal with that, the sexy thing and the voluptuous stuff."

"Well, is it a burden in some way?"

"I don't know. Who cares?"

She said that she still faces constant rejection.

"Come on. I find that hard to believe," Mason said. "Tell me something you've been rejected for that you really wanted."

"I wanted to be Daisy in 'The Great Gatsby.'"

The part in Baz Luhrman's film of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, which opens this summer, went to British actress Carey Mulligan.

Johansson's next screen role will be reprising the Black Widow in a Marvel Studios "Captain America" sequel. "Time to get the suit back on," she said.

"Do you enjoy being a superhero?'

"Yeah. I love playing Black Widow. I love it. Also, my character is awesome."

She IS looking for tougher, more womanly parts. Two years after her brief marriage to actor Ryan Reynolds ended, Scarlett Johansson knows her life and her career are still in transition.

"So where are you in that process?" Mason asked.

"That is THE question."

"You've been married. You've been divorced. Are you a different actress because of that, do you think?"

"I think the things that happen to you in your life affect your work as an artist, of course, you know. Especially those big, life-changing moments."

"Do you feel older?"

"No. I feel wiser, maybe. I only feel older in my right hip," she laughed. "But I'm attributing that to Marvel. Thanks, Marvel! You'll be getting my PT bills forever!"

For more info:

• "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (Official site)