Acclaimed actors Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner reprise their beloved, kick-ass roles as Black Widow and Hawkeye, respectively, in Marvel's new action-adventure “Avengers: Age of Ultron.”
When Johansson dons Black Widow’s gear for the new film, she has one clear goal in mind: keeping true to her character. She says, “The most important aspect of my job as an actor, who’s been carrying this character from ‘Iron Man’ to ‘The Avengers’ and ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier,’ is to keep consistency with the character’s arc and have the character’s evolution be one that is cohesive. You want to feel like the character is growing as opposed to just staying the same.”
Although Johansson worked with different directors over the course of inhabiting the Natasha Romanoff character, it was her first meeting with director/writer Joss Whedon that allowed her to explore her character’s past. “In my first meeting with Joss, I had the chance to talk about Natasha’s backstory and her sordid past,” recalls Johansson, “and I wanted to make sure that she stayed sort of gray, not really black or white. What’s exciting and compelling about the character is that she’s not Cap; she’s not righteous. She was in S.H.I.E.L.D. because it’s where she belonged, not necessarily that it was the right place to be. Now we find The Avengers in business as usual mode but it’s changing. So it’s my job to make sure that Natasha, through that change, stays true to the Natasha that I started with in ‘The Avengers.’”