Scarlett Johansson Earned $43M in 2025 and Says There Is Still Always a Deficit at Home

May 26, 2026 by apost team

Scarlett Johansson has never been someone who pretends the juggling act is easy. The actress, born Nov. 22, 1984, is one of the most in-demand stars in Hollywood — she was named the highest-paid actress of 2025 by Forbes, earning $43 million that year — and in the last two years alone she has worked on seven films. She is also a wife, a mother of two, and the founder of a skincare company. By every external measure, she appears to have it all. By her own account, appearances are misleading.

"I think actually admitting that there is no work-life balance is the first step to kind of getting there in a way, because it's not possible," she told CBS Sunday Morning during an interview promoting her new film "Jurassic World Rebirth." "There's always something that is… there's a deficit in some area." 

The interview landed widely because it said something most working parents already know but rarely hear spoken aloud by someone at the top of their field. Johansson did not frame it as a complaint. She framed it as a realization — one that took time to arrive at and even longer to make peace with.

Johansson shares daughter Rose, born in 2014, with ex-husband Romain Dauriac, to whom she was married from 2014 to 2017, and son Cosmo, born in August 2021, with her husband, comedian Colin Jost, born June 29, 1982, to whom she has been married since October 2020. She has spoken at length about keeping both children out of the public eye — a line she holds firmly, even as other areas of her life have become more transparent.

The interview was not the first time she had spoken candidly about this tension. But it was among the most direct.

The moment that resonated most came when Johansson described how she had recalibrated her definition of success — not as an actress, but as a mother. "Somebody once told me,

'If you're successful as a parent like 75% of the time, that's good — if you're doing 75% of it right, then you're winning,'"

she said during the CBS Sunday Morning interview. "Which is probably true."

She has also learned to extend that generosity to herself in other areas. "I think you have to be… I learned to be more kind to myself. You can't do all of these things all the time," she said. The admission carried particular weight coming from someone who had spent years being held to an impossible standard — professionally, physically, and personally.

Speaking to PEOPLE in April 2026, Johansson also reflected on what it was like coming of age in Hollywood.

"I think growing up in the entertainment industry and being 20-something years old in the early 2000s, being a 20-year-old woman in the early 2000s in the spotlight, I think in general it was just a really harsh time," she said.

The context of her remarks matters. Johansson grew up in a Manhattan household of six that relied on welfare and food stamps. By nine, she was already acting. Her ascent to the top of the industry was long, hard-won, and defined as much by what she survived as what she achieved. The woman who now earns $43 million a year and runs her own skincare company still struggles with the same question every working parent does. "Is it good enough?" she said. "You know… there's just like… is it good enough?"

For what it is worth — and by the metrics she has chosen — the answer appears to be yes.

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Do you agree with Scarlett Johansson that admitting there is no work-life balance is the first step toward finding peace with it? Let us know in the comments and pass this on to your family, friends, and anyone who needs to hear this today!