Scarlett Johansson

In another collaboration with Allen, Johansson was cast opposite Hugh Jackman and Allen in the 2006 feature, Scoop. While the film enjoyed a modest worldwide box office success, it received mixed reviews by critics. The New York Times called the film "not especially funny yet oddly appealing" and cited parallels to The Thin Man, saying, "while Johansson is certainly no Myrna Loy, her performance is all over the place ... but finally works for a film that is itself all over the place. Mr. Allen seems happy to just watch her strut her stuff, and after a while so are we." New York magazine said, "Johansson doesn’t have the natural buoyancy to play a screwball Nancy Drew, but she’s smart enough to know what’s needed (a young Diane Keaton), and manages to rouse herself", while USA Today criticized "her delivery of Allenesque one-liners" as "clunky", and "sometimes, she seems in over her head playing opposite Allen." The same year, she appeared in Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia, a film noir shot in Los Angeles and Bulgaria. Johansson later said she was a De Palma fan and had wanted to work with him on the film, even though she thought that she was "physically wrong" for the part. Her reviews were mixed. CNN.com noted, "Johansson takes to the pulpy period atmosphere as if it were oxygen," whereas the Kalamazoo Gazette referred to Johansson as "miscast".
Johansson next had a supporting role in the Christopher Nolan thriller The Prestige (2006), again opposite Hugh Jackman as well as Christian Bale. Nolan, who described Johansson as possessing an "ambiguity... a shielded quality", said he was "very keen" for her to play the role. Johansson said, "she loved working with Nolan", and he was "incredibly focused and driven and involved, and really involved in the performance in every aspect." The film was both a critical and a worldwide box office success, recommended by the Los Angeles Times as "an adult, provocative piece of work." Also in 2006, Johansson starred in a short film directed by Bennett Miller and set to Bob Dylan's "When the Deal Goes Down...", released to promote Dylan's album, Modern Times.
Johansson starred in 2007's The Nanny Diaries, alongside Laura Linney. The film performed only marginally well at the box office, and was critically-panned. Johansson's reviews were mixed, with Variety saying, "She essays an engaging heroine", while The New Yorker criticized her for looking "merely confused" while "trying to give the material a plausible emotional center". In his review for the San Francisco Chronicle, Mick LaSalle said, "There's something painful about watching Scarlett Johansson, who looks as if she never had an indecisive moment in her life, struggle to seem ineffectual."