Scarlett Johansson was told her acne looked like a volcano's surface. A 'simple' product helped her skin after a week.

• Scarlett Johansson was told her face looked like a volcano when she was 14, due to her acne.
• The Marvel actress tried expensive treatments in her 20s, which made her skin worse.

Scarlett Johansson suffered from severe acne as a teenager, she told British Vogue.

The "Black Widow" actress said she struggled with her skin into her 20s and had to rely on makeup artists to cover it up. But in the end, it wasn't an expensive treatment that came to her rescue — it was moisturizer.

"When I was growing up, the messaging in the beauty world was that acne was ugly – there was not a lot of acceptance or support around these perceived 'problems,'" she said.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Johansson said when she was 14, a make-up artist told her that her face looked like the surface of a volcano.

"She wasn't being mean," she said. "She was also suffering from skin problems. But I became obsessed."

Johansson tried retinol, drying creams, scrubs, and toners to clear her skin in her 20s — but the products irritated it more.

The one thing she hadn't tried was moisturizer and told Vogue she was "terrified" of putting it on her face. There wasn't as much information about skin barriers as there is now, she said.

The skin barrier is the outer layer, made up of dead cells, fats, and proteins that help protect your skin from the environment, dermatologist Melissa Piliang told Cleveland Clinic.

Not using a moisturizer can contribute to a poor skin barrier and can cause conditions including acne.

Eventually, Johansson had run out of options and instinctively used moisturizer, which she said healed her skin.

"I just got rid of everything I thought could be irritating it. I did a light exfoliation every day with a brush and started using a very simple noncomedogenic moisturizer," she told The Telegraph, adding that she saw results "within seven days."

"My skin started healing itself and then I stopped picking at my face and staring into my pores, and just let my skin really reset itself," she told Vogue.

Johansson has used a range of products, some luxury brands, some drugstore, and through this ended up developing her own skincare brand — The Outset — which launches this month.