Actress Scarlett Johansson recently gave birth to her first child – a baby girl named Rose. Normally, this kind of news would be a passing “Aww” kind of thing, but Johansson is no ordinary actress. We’re talking about the Black Widow, filming “Avengers: Age of Ultron” while carrying a child.
Not the sort of thing you usually think about when picturing stunt-heavy Marvel films.
Although Johansson’s pregnancy did slow down production, it didn’t stop completely. Director Joss Whedon featured Johansson as much as possible, and hired three stunt doubles to do her fight scenes with dotted maps on their faces. The film is now in post-production, and Johansson’s face is being grafted onto the doubles’ bodies.
"It's always funny," said Chris Evans (Captain America) about filming with Johansson to Entertainment Weekly. “You walk by, 'Hey, Scarlett — oh, weird. You're not Scarlett at all. Sorry.' A lot of fake Scarletts around."
Some people have been giving Johansson flack for using doubles because of her pregnancy. However, they needed three most likely because Heidi Moneymaker’s absence. Moneymaker is Johansson’s usual Black Widow stunt double. Johansson has credited Moneymaker, who won the Best Stunt award at the Taurus World Stunt Awards for “The Avengers” in 2013, with adding to the overall look of Natasha.
The fact of the matter is: stunt doubles play a major role in action movies, and their work is a major part of what makes these movies capital-A Awesome.
