Cover Story: USO Tour Keeps Moving with Big-Screen Star Scarlett Johansson

The USO Star Machine just keeps moving forward. Only weeks after sending out Lance Armstrong, Robin Williams, Miss USO and other VIPs to visit troops in Iraq and Afghanistan,four-time Golden Globe nominee Scarlett Johansson made the rounds visiting our nation’s bravest in harm’s way.

The 23-year-old bomb shell spent five days visiting late last month with about 3,500 men and women from the U.S. military as part of her first USO tour. Johansson says everybody she met there was "so incredibly friendly and polite and genuine and generous. They were so, so sweet. I mean, I was just amazed."

"I’ve wanted to go over and visit for some time, and now my moment has arrived. It’s one thing to reply to a letter or extend your thanks to service members in a speech, but it’s another thing to visit them and spend time with those that do so much for us back home," says Johansson.

Johansson says some people ripped patches off their jackets as gifts.One Marine offered his Saint Christopher medal.Another starstruck guy gushed: "You made my whole deployment!"

At one stop, the star of recent hits “Lost in Translation” and “Match Point” met with nearly 600 service members at Camp Buehring, Kuwait during her five-day USO tour to the Gulf region. Hundreds of Marines and sailors from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit put on their best smiles as they waited anxiously to get a glimpse of the Hollywood actress.

“I’m a huge Scarlett fan,” said Lance Cpl. Nathan Long, a calibration technician with Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 166 (REIN), 11th MEU, according to U.S. Marine Corps report in the region. “When I found out she was coming, I couldn’t believe it. All I thought about was that I needed to meet her.”

“It’s important to give people a piece of home and to boost morale,” Johansson said about her visit. “Everybody out here is risking everything, giving us one of the biggest gifts they can. I want to be out here to support them.”

“It’s nice to give them a smile in the middle of the day,” she said about her military fans. “If they are missing home, feeling down or worried, hopefully being here will get their minds off of things.”

Later, more than 500 other service members waited in line at Camp Arifan, Kuwait, for a chance to meet the award-winning actress. She playfully joked with the troops, even sharing laughs and photos, and even some moments with U.S. Army divers fresh out of the freezing cold Gulf Sea waters of Kuwait.

Adding to her list of film credits are "The Nanny Diaries," "The Prestige," "The Black Dahlia," and "The Island," among many others. Having made her acting debut at the age of eight, she has worked alongside actors like Bill Murray, Colin Firth, Woody Allen, Sean Connery, Lawrence Fishburn, and many others.

And her most recent production, “The Other Boleyn Girl,” co-starring Natalie Portman, has garnered a lot of pre-release buzz and is due out later this month.

In a parting message to the military members, the actress said, “Stay safe. Everybody is thinking of you and waiting for you at home.”