Even for the smartest and most talented actors, there are far more ways for a movie to fall short than succeed, so it’s a rare moment when project after project clicks seamlessly into place. Right now, Scarlett Johansson is clearly having such a moment. 

Earlier in the year, she played a pivotal role in what has become the highest-grossing movie of all time worldwide, Avengers: Endgame, and filming has just wrapped for the standalone movie about her character, Black Widow, scheduled for release in May. 

Meanwhile, her performances in two recent, smaller-scale movies, the searing relationship drama Marriage Story and the extraordinary, off-kilter Nazi-era comedy Jojo Rabbit, are drawing sustained acclaim; for the former she is widely considered a contender for best actress.

All of which seems to leave Johansson quietly proud, but also uneasy.

“I worked really hard for a really long time,” she says, semi-supine on a sofa in a New York photo studio at the end of another long day. “So maybe this is the result of that.” 

There’s a carefulness about Johansson as she says this, not the kind that implies insecurity or a lack of self-belief, more that she is used to being someone for whom it is almost always too soon to really celebrate. “I definitely am the type of person who’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop,” she reflects. “But I’m learning to change that habit.”

One shared thread between the very different Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit that Johansson herself has noted is that they are the first two movies in her career in which she has truly played a parent. But there is another far more specific commonality in the two movies: They both include key scenes in which Johansson ties someone else’s shoes.

“That is so weird, totally weird,” she acknowledges. “One of those cosmic things.” Johansson says that when she filmed the second of these—Jojo Rabbit’s—the echo passed her by. “Totally forgot,” she says. “Completely didn’t see the connection.” 

To someone who hasn’t seen either movie, that might say something about coincidences and about her singular immersion in each role. To someone who has, it may also remind you just how powerful and heartbreaking an actor’s simple gesture can be.