When Scarlett Johansson chose her lucrative SodaStream contract over her charity work with Oxfam, it appeared to be an unusual choice.
The 29-year-old issued a strong public statement backing the controversial company which operates in the West Bank, despite Oxfam’s claim that the firm profits from illegal trade that harms Palestinians.
But The Mail on Sunday has learned the clues to her outspoken position may lie in her family’s struggle with money.
The blonde star of The Girl With The Pearl Earring and The Island admits she hankers after wealth and squanders money.
And while she commands huge fees for her film appearances, including a reputed £13 million for Avengers 2, she has also amassed a stable of sponsors, with top-brand firms paying her £3 million a year for acting as an ambassador for their goods.
‘It’s nice to have money. I didn’t grow up with it so it’s nice to have it,’ she told The Mail on Sunday.
‘I’m not at all frugal and I don’t save – to my business manager’s dismay. I like to be generous. I can’t stand people who are tight with their money, it drives me crazy.
‘It’s different if you’re scrimping and saving because you need to, to save up for something. But I cannot stand cheapness.’
Johansson, ranked 12th on the Forbes List of the top-earning superstars, grew up in a sprawling subsidised housing complex in a part of Manhattan once nicknamed the Wild West.
Her Danish father Karsten, a struggling architect, and her mother Melanie, an Ashkenazi Jew, struggled to pay rent as they raised Scarlett, her twin brother Hunter and siblings Vanessa and Adrian.
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Of her childhood, she said: ‘My father barely made enough to get by. We moved house every year and finally we settled in a housing development for lower-middle-income families.
‘We went to state school and depended on programmes for school lunches and transport.’
Today the family’s once run-down three-bed apartment in Greenwich Village, bought by Scarlett’s siblings at a discount under a tenants’ right- to-buy scheme, is worth millions thanks to gentrification and the booming property market.
One neighbour said: ‘Back then, this was a rough area. We called it the Wild West and there wasn’t much money around. It’s all changed now.’
SodaStream is said to be paying £243,000 for Johansson’s advertisement, which will be shown live during the Super Bowl today.
Her decision to remain linked to the firm, whose factory is in Mishor Adumim, an industrial zone in the Jerusalem hills, has infuriated Oxfam.
The charity insists it is incompatible for Johansson to represent both it and SodaStream.
It said: ‘Oxfam believes that businesses such as SodaStream that operate in settlements further the ongoing poverty and denial of rights of the Palestinian communities that we work to support. We are opposed to all trade from Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law.’
Johansson insists SodaStream provides employment for hundreds of West Bank Palestinians along with Israeli Jews. She said: ‘It supports neighbours working alongside each other, receiving equal pay, equal benefits and equal rights.’
