May 19, 2026
There's a common misperception that the rich and famous have it better than others. And, in some ways, they might, but when it comes to the work-life balance that so many workers chase, they're just as lost as the rest of us.
Scarlett Johansson, for instance, might seem to have it all. She's an Oscar-nominated and Tony Award-winning actress with high-grossing and globally recognized films (1). She's perhaps best known for serving as the executive producer and starring as Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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She's also a business founder with a skincare brand, The Outset (2), and a production company, These Pictures.
And she's in a seemingly idyllic marriage with Saturday Night Live personality Colin Jost, and she has two children — one with Jost and one with her ex-husband, Romain Dauriac.
Overall, Johansson has a reported net worth of $165 million (3).
But even she admits that dividing her time equally between her work obligations and her family ones has been a challenge she has been unable to accomplish.
"I think actually admitting that there is no work-life balance is the first step to getting there in a way because it's just not possible," Johansson told CBS Sunday Morning (4). "There's always … a deficit in some area. I've learned to be more kind to myself in that way. You can't do all of these things all the time. There's just like, 'Is it good enough?'"
A lifelong lesson on work-life balance
Johansson started to come to this realization early in life, as she watched her parents struggle to pay bills. She has spoken in the past about her family relying on food stamps to get by when she was a young child.
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"We were living on welfare, we were on food stamps," Johansson said in an episode of Inside the Actors Studio (5), adding that it was a strain on her parents' marriage. "My parents were raising four kids in a low-income household in Manhattan. So, it was a lot."
As an adult, she has felt the consequences of putting too much emphasis on one aspect of her life. She dated her Black Dahlia co-star Josh Hartnett for two years in the early 2000s, but the pair ultimately broke up because their schedules kept them apart (6).
Since having children, however, Johansson has paid more attention to that work-life split — but, even today, she says, she doesn't get it fully right.
"Somebody once told me, 'If you're successful as a parent like 75% of the time, that's good — if you're doing 75% of it like right, then you're winning, which is probably true," Johansson told CBS.
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Work-life balance is increasingly important
Johansson is hardly the only person struggling to balance their work life and their home life.
For the first time since Gallup began evaluating the lives of U.S. workers, more workers report struggling (49%) than thriving (46%) (7). Engagement has dropped to the lowest level on record in the past decade at just 31% of engaged employees (8).
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Perhaps that's why, according to the 2025 Workplace Wellness Survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (9), work-life balance is the top contributor to workers' sense of workplace well-being these days.
That same survey, though, seems to show that Johansson’s beliefs about it not being possible to achieve equilibrium are not universal. Despite many workers struggling, some 46% of respondents in that survey said work-life balance at their companies was excellent or very good. Just five percent said their work-life balance was poor, the smallest share in the past four years.
That said, work-life balance may continue to fluctuate or worsen amid economic uncertainty.
With record-low consumer sentiment (10) and rising inflation (11), many breadwinners may have to work more to pay their bills, which can quickly cut into time with family and friends.
Article Sources
We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see our ethics and guidelines.
IMDb (1); The Outset (2); Celebrity Net Worth (3); YouTube (4); ET Online (5); The Mirror (6); Gallup (7),(8); Employee Benefit Research Institute (9); University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers (10); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (11)
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Chris Morris is a veteran journalist with more than 35 years of experience at many of the internet's biggest news outlets. In addition to his activities as a writer, reporter and editor, Chris is also a frequent panel moderator and speaker at major conferences, including CES and South by Southwest.
