The American star, who is engaged to French journalist Romain Dauriac, will receive her "Cesar" at French cinema's annual gala awards ceremony in the capital on February 28th.

Johansson, 29, is being recognized for a career in which she has already made nearly 35 films, having first come to the world's attention as a 14-year-old in Robert Redford's "The Horse Whisperer".

She has gone on to work with the likes of the Coen brothers, directors Brian de Palma and Christopher Nolan and become a muse of Woody Allen, with whom she has made three films, "Match Point", "Scoop" and "Vicky Cristina Barcelona".

It is her off-screen activities that have made headlines recently however.

Last month, she created a stir with an appearance on the David Letterman show in which she suggested that Parisians fully deserved their reputation for a certain deficiency in the politeness department.

SEE ALSO: Scarlett Johansson bemoans 'rude' Parisians

"Of course when I first got there I thought people were not that whole kind of rude Parisian thing," she said on the US chat show. "You know, people aren't rude they are wonderful.

"Well that was before I was a mainstay there and then people decided that once I wasn't going away they could just be really terribly rude to me."

Johansson also hit the news when she was forced to relinquish her role as an ambassador for British charity Oxfam after it said it was incompatible with her appearance in commercials for SodaStream, an Israeli company which has production facilities on illegally occupied Palestinian territory.