Scarlett Johansson is hot. Hot under the collar. Scarlett Johannson is suing Grégoire Delacourt and his publisher JC Lattes, the author of a bestselling French novel featuring a fictional character that resembles her. The author says it is a tribute to Scarlett Johansson and swears that the comparison is meant as a compliment. The legal action could make legal and literary history and test the limits of creative expression.

Scarlett Johansson is suing the author after he described a character in his novel as being her “doppelgänger,” or exact double. Delacourt insists that he meant the comparison as a compliment and tribute to the “Lost in Translation” star’s beauty. Scarlett Johansson is demanding compensation and damages from the publisher for “breach and fraudulent use of personal rights.” She also wants to ban all foreign translations and film adaptations of the book. Harking back to John Malkovich who appeared in “Being John Malkovich,” Scarlett Johansson would be the perfect choice of actress for the role of a woman who looks like Scarlett Johansson.

The book, which was published in March, is named “La première chose qu’on regarde” (“The First Thing We Look At”). It is about a mysterious woman who looks just like the actress. She asks for help from an auto mechanic in the Somme, in northern France. The mechanic believes that the woman is Scarlett Johansson but learns that it is not Johansson but her exact double, a woman named Jeanine Foucaprez.

The author says he “stupefied” that Johansson is taking this to court. He told the newspaper Le Figaro “I am also very sad. I was hoping that she might send me flowers because this book is, in a way, a declaration of love. She is an archetypal beauty of our times, very human with a touching fragility. She is a wonderful, iconic actress. I also describe someone being hurt when their airbag fails to inflate,” he said. “Am I going to be sued by airbag manufacturers?”

 by Tony Sokol