Scarlett Johansson: ‘I’m No Role Model’ After SodaStream Controversy

Scarlett Johansson gives her first interview since she stepped down as global ambassador for the anti-poverty coalition Oxfam in January, in the current issue of Dazed Magazine, and she takes the opportunity to let the world know that she is nobody’s role model.

The Avengers actress appeared in a Super Bowl commercial for SodaStream, a company that markets a kit to make soft drinks at home with water, syrup and carbonation. But the company has a manufacturing plant located in Ma’ale Adumim, an Israeli settlement on the West Bank, which led to calls for Johansson to give up her endorsement of the do-it-yourself soda maker.

Oxfam had maintained Scarlett Johansson as its celebrity “ambassador” for the past eight years, but when she issued a statement refusing to scuttle her SodaStream endorsement deal and saying had a “fundamental difference of opinion” with Oxfam and calling herself a “supporter of economic cooperation and social interaction between a democratic Israel and Palestine,” she received a sharp rebuke from the 72-year-old charity organization.

Oxfam said, darkly, that it was “considering the implications of her new statement and what it means for Ms. Johansson’s role as an Oxfam global ambassador.”

That was all Scarlett Johansson needed to hear. She quickly shed her role as Oxfam ambassador. In the Dazed interview, she talked about feeling dazed by the responsibilities of her own phenomenal wealth and fame, saying that conveying her beliefs through her art is “not my jam.”

“I don’t profess to know more or less than anybody else,” she said.

In the interview, Scarlett Johansson, whose celebrity status has made her one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood with an estimated net worth of $55 million, said that she doesn’t want the responsibility that comes with being famous.

“I don’t see myself as being a role model,” said the 29-year-old star. “How could I wake up every day and be a normal person if I was completely aware that my image was being manipulated on a global platform. How could I sleep?”

Scarlett Johansson, who will reportedly receive $20 million for her appearance in the next Avengers flick, complained about public demands that impinge on her “peace of mind,” saying, “You’ve got to be able to protect those things. How else could you exist? You’d go crazy, anybody would go crazy.”