David Fincher thought Scarlett Johansson was too sexy to play Lisbeth Salander

Most of us know that Scarlett Johansson is hot. Is ice cold? Do bears shit in the woods? It’s a given.

Can you be too ridiculously good looking to take on a role? Yes you can. This is the reason that ScarJo was not cast as Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher’s THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO.

In a profile for Vogue of Rooney Mara, the director said this, “We flew in people from New Zealand and Swaziland and all over the place. Look, we saw some amazing people. Scarlett Johansson was great. It was a great audition, I’m telling you. But the thing with Scarlett is, you can’t wait for her to take her clothes off.” This was before her boob pics were leaked all over the internet. So now it’s really no big surprise.

Then Fincher followed up with how he envisioned the actress playing Lisbeth would have to be like, “I keep trying to explain this. Salander should be like E.T. If you put E.T. dolls out before anyone had seen the movie, they would say, ‘What is this little squishy thing?’ Well, you know what? When he hides under the table and he grabs the Reese’s Pieces, you love him! It has to be like that.”

So Rooney Mara is like a squishy little weird thing? Okay, I can follow with that analogy. Ultimately the actress won out, “There were all these different versions of Salander, but the one that had the most layers was Rooney’s. I thought, This is the person to follow.”