Johansson's performance as Grace in 'The Horse Whisperer' (1998) earned her a Hollywood Reporter Young Star award. And previously her 'Manny & Lo' (1996) role received a nod by the Independent Spirit Awards.

Scarlett has an older brother and sister and a twin brother. She divides her time between New York with her dad, and Los Angeles with her mother. Her acting career was launched in the off-Broadway production of 'Sophistry' with Ethan Hawke.

'The Island' is unusually big budget for you, so why choose it? "I was in the middle of doing 'Match Point' with Woody Allen, and we were gonna be finishing that. It was five weeks till they started production on 'The Island,' and I read the script when I was in London and it was just a great script, exciting and fun. I love genre movies when they're done really well and I think they accomplish what a film is trying to do, which is allow you to escape your life for a couple of hours. I was in a world all of my own when I was reading this script, and I wanted to work with Michael and Ewan."

How tough was making this blckbuster movie? "Making any movie is hard. I was talking to somebody about it in the middle of shooting 'The Black Dahlia' and we were saying that you have 200 people, we're all working and it's the kind of job where even if you've got the flu and you have a 103 fever, you have to come to work, because time is money when you're making a film. People work harder in film than most jobs, because it's just that kind of intense work for five months or whatever."

So, you were pushed to some personal limits on this film then? "Kinda yeah ... it was very physically exhausting, as we were running around all the time. We'd work 14 hours a day and then we'd get off work and hit the gym for two hours. But once you start doing that after a couple of months, you just go into sort of this mode that allows you to just keep getting up at 5:30 and going to work: you just do it."

Are there any comparisons to be made between Bay and Allen - who represent the opposite extremes of American cinema?! "I don't know that there is a comparison you can make between Michael and Woody. Let's put it this way, when I told Woody that I was doing a Michael Bay movie, he was like 'who? I mean he's totally separated and is such a snob. I told him, I said 'you've got to see The Island when it comes out. It's gonna be great. It's a really great science fiction movie'. He goes, 'oh, I like science fiction'. We'll see if we can get him to the premiere. But, I love working with Woody. He's a dream. I think I'd be happy working with him for the rest of my career. We had a fun time working together and now we're working together again."

Tell us more about your Stem Cell beliefs "I think that there's a lot of wonderful possibilities erupting," she explains. "I mean, if they could eliminate diseases like Alzheimer's and polio that would be incredible. On the same note, people may say you're playing with fate or the idea of people creating a master race or being able to choose their children's eye colour - and that seems quite strange to me. However, I think that the positive outweighs the negative."