Scarlett Johansson drew from parents' divorce for Marriage Story

Scarlett Johansson drew from her parents' divorce to prepare for the family drama Marriage Story.

The actress appears opposite Adam Driver as a young mother coping with the breakup of her marriage in the film, and while the star has been divorced twice, she was directly influenced by what she had experienced growing up.

"It felt familiar somehow, but not because of what I'd been experiencing then," Johansson, who was in the middle of her divorce from Romain Dauriac when preparing for the project, told Elle magazine. "But maybe because of how I grew up, and the dynamic between my parents - or maybe because I've known women who've dedicated themselves to their partner's vision and then come out of this decade-long relationship feeling almost like a ghost."

The Avengers: Endgame star was also previously married to Ryan Reynolds but is now setting out to find wedded bliss for a third time with Saturday Night Live star Colin Jost.

The 34-year-old also recalled how she set her own feelings of happiness aside in order to portray her character's anguish.

"My ability to compartmentalise comes in handy when it's time for things like that," she added. "I'm certainly, obviously, very happy and fulfilled in my personal life, but I'm also a sum of many parts, and able to access different parts of my story and how I got here. It's all valuable."

Johansson was thrilled to play a mother on screen for the first time too.

"It's funny, because I had never played a mother before, and now suddenly I have two films back to back where I have children who are, like, eight or nine years old," Johansson, who shares five-year-old daughter Rose with Dauriac, added. "Actors get to wherever they need to go whether or not they've lived it, but (these roles) had a deeper resonance with me because of my own personal experience."