Scarlett Johansson tones down the sex in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

NEW YORK (AP) - Scarlett Johansson says she won't be bringing sexy back to Broadway.

The actress with the pouty lips and gentle curves that GQ magazine once called "Babe of the Year" is determined to be a more naturalistic Maggie the Cat in a revival of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that opens Jan 17, 2013.

That's the same role Elizabeth Taylor embodied while virtually purring in a satin slip. And her successors - Anika Noni Rose, Ashley Judd and Kathleen Turner, among them - all played it to variously breathless, sexy degrees.

But Johansson talks about how she approached the predatory feline of Williams' classic Southern play sounding like the way she herself would prefer to be described.