Scarlett Johansson is Hollywood’s biggest player

MOVE over, Leo, there’s a new player in Hollywood.

While DiCaprio has made a second career out of loving and leaving models, Scarlett Johansson has a 15-year trail of famous broken hearts behind her — with Ryan Reynolds, Jared Leto, Sean Penn and Jude Law, among others, all in her rearview mirror.

“Scarlett likes to be in control,” an actor told of the actor’s love life. “Then, when she gets it, she gets bored,” reports New York Post.

Even before her second divorce this September, from French journalist Romain Dauriac — the father of her three-year-old daughter Rose — the actor had fallen in fast with Saturday Night Live star Colin Jost.

The pair was seen kissing at the SNL wrap party in May.

 

Since then, the couple has been spotted in the Hamptons, in September, and on October 28 at a theatre in Boston — with Johansson, 32, playing the dutiful girlfriend as the 35-year-old comedian performed.

An SNL insider said it’s not hard to see why Johansson is drawn to Jost, a Harvard grad: “Colin’s smart, successful, unpretentious.”

And his dating history includes only one other celebrity: Parks and Recreation actor Rashida Jones, from 2013 to 2016.

“Colin’s a total good guy, not a ladies’ man at all,” said the SNL source.

Johansson, on the other hand, has, for more than a decade, been espousing various versions of a quote she gave to Playboy earlier this year: “I don’t think it’s natural to be a monogamous person.”

In June, she was seen holding hands in Manhattan with entertainment lawyer Kevin Yorn, and a source told People in September that their “relationship is complex and goes far back.”

 

She’s also been linked this year to her Avengers co-star Chris Evans.

Meanwhile, Jost puts Johansson “on a pedestal — it’s all about her,” said the SNLinsider. “He’s just afraid he’ll f — k it up.”

In 2003, the year she was nominated for two best actor Golden Globes, the then-19-year-old Johansson paired off with actor James Holzier.

But reports from the next year included a fling with The Conjuring star Patrick Wilson, hook-ups with Jude Law and possible elevator sex with Benicio Del Toro at a Chateau Marmontparty following the Oscars. (Johansson later said, “I went home alone that night to my mom’s house,” but never outright denied the incident.)

The actor revealed something that makes her tick when she told Cosmopolitan in 2016 that “long ago, I had someone in my life who was forever unavailable ... but, like, so attractively unavailable.”

Sources speculate that the man in question was Law, who was engaged to Sienna Miller in 2004.

Next on her list: known playboy Jared Leto.

“When she was with Jared, they were very playful with one another,” said someone who was in her social circle at the time. “He was supercool, easygoing ... loved to have a good time. He liked to joke around. She thought he was funny.”

But even though Leto is 13 years Johansson’s senior, she eventually grew tired of the 30 Seconds to Mars rocker’s childish ways. “She was always [more] mature, and things just fizzled with them.” (The two reportedly had a brief fling in 2012, as well.)

A Johansson source pegged her next romance — with Black Dahlia co-star Josh Hartnett — to the fact that actors get lonely on set. “[They] spend a lot of time in hotel rooms, alone.”

The two shared a low-key romance from 2005 to 2006.

There, the Hollywood heart-throbs would go hipster incognito — him with a beanie pulled low on his head, her with a septum ring.

Scheduling conflicts were blamed for their split.

Later, Hartnett had harsh words about romancing co-stars, telling Elle, “I don’t recommend it to young actors. You can make a lot of enemies in the business that way.”

In 2007, rumours swirled of a hook-up between Johansson and Justin Timberlake after she appeared in his video for What Comes Around ... Goes Around.

But things changed when Johansson found love that same year with actor Ryan Reynolds. The two avoided appearing on the red carpet together and reportedly kept their engagement a secret for months before announcing it in May 2008. When they wed in September of that year, she was just 23 and he was 31.

 

During the marriage, Johansson landed one of the roles that would help make her the highest-grossing actor in the world, Black Widow — signing on in 2009 to play the role in Iron Man 2, which would go on to gross more than $620 million worldwide.

Months later, Reynolds announced his own superhero movie, Green Lantern.

Nonetheless, a publicist has said Reynolds grew jealous of his wife’s career and earnings: “They weren’t on equal footing at that point, and it created tension.”

Sources also spoke of Reynolds being disciplined, regimented and highly scheduled, and Johansson being more laid-back and freewheeling, which sometimes led to screaming matches.

Although the couple shared a home in Los Angeles, in 2010 they were rarely together: Johansson was on Broadway eight times a week in A View From the Bridge, and Reynolds was filming Green Lantern in New Orleans.

 

“He was afraid she was having affairs,” said the publicist.

“Meanwhile, he got close to Blake [Lively, now Reynolds’ wife] while shootingGreen Lantern — while he and Scarlett were still married.”

The couple announced their separation by the end of 2010 and were divorced the next year. Johansson has said she shouldn’t be with another actor: “If one person is more successful than the other, that also proves challenging. There may be a competitive thing.”

That didn’t stop her from a rebound with the ultimate bad boy, Sean Penn.

The two met in January 2011, just weeks after her separation from Reynolds went public.

“She sure met her match with Sean,” said a friend of Penn’s.

“He’s like Scarlett’s male counterpoint: Neither one of the m’s single for long, but marriage doesn’t suit [them].”

In classic Hollywood style, he was nearly twice her age: 50 to the actor’ 26.

 

During a whirlwind six months, the two ran off to Mexico, were seen kissing at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and attended Reese Witherspoon’s wedding to Jim Toth before calling the whole thing off in June.

Penn’s pal said the older actor was no bed of roses: “Sean just doesn’t trust women. He feels like women haven’t treated him right. And they all feel the opposite.”

Johansson’s next paramour, Manhattan ad exec Nate Naylor, was a pointed attempt to avoid actors.

The two were seen out at nightclubs, but Johansson moved on within a year.

Her shift away from Hollywood men continued when the actor met the man who would become her second husband, through a tattoo-artist friend.

Romain Dauriac had been the editor of a Paris art magazine and managed a creative agency.

While the pair conducted much of their courtship in New York City, they were living part-time in Paris by the time daughter Rose Dorothy was born in 2014.

 

They married in October of that year, where they also attended a rodeo at which Johansson sang the national anthem.

For marriage to work, she has said, “He has to be in a field that’s completely different from yours ... What’s important to him is the recognition that he gets from his job, and that has nothing to do with my job.”

Surprisingly, given her reluctance to walk red carpets with past significant others, Johansson was willing to parade Dauriac in front of cameras at film festivals, awards ceremonies and art openings.

Her attempts to both involve her civilian husband in her movie-star life and to position herself as a mere mortal shopkeeper could not save the marriage, however.

“She went into her marriages optimistically,” said one Hollywood agent who knows Johansson. “With Ryan: too hard to be with another actor; with Romain: too hard not to be.”

 

A French source said that tensions erupted over her career. “[Dauriac] was a stay-at-home dad on Mom’s schedule — he had to fly to sets whenever Scarlett beckoned. Eventually he got tired of being a back-seat husband.”

Insiders add that Dauriac was shocked when Johansson went public with divorce proceedings earlier this year and declared their union “irretrievably broken.”

But once the A-lister was done, she was done.

As an actor close to Johansson’s inner circle said: “She’s a bit of a badass in real life, too. Scarlett just does what she wants.”

For now, sources say that Jost is looking good, adding it’s a big deal for Johansson that she has already met his family, and that he’s met her friends.

“She likes gorgeous guys,” said one Hollywood stylist who’s worked with Johansson. But, for now at least, “she’s had enough of slick guys.”

This article was first published in the New York Post