RED-FACED SCARLETT

May 10, 2004 SCARLETT Johansson has come clean about her dirty encounter with hunky Benicio Del Toro. The 19-year-old Hollywood cutie admits that, as rumored, she and Del Toro — who at 37 is old enough to be her dad — did get hot and heavy in the elevator of the Chateau Marmont hotel after the Oscars ceremony. "We were making out or having sex or something, which I think is very unsanitary," she tells Elle magazine. "He's a fabulous guy." But Scarlett — who got raves in "Lost in Translation," in which she has a platonic but intense relationship with Bill Murray — adds that older men and younger women aren't really a stretch, particularly in the movies. "Men age like wine, and women seem to wilt in the eyes of an audience," she says.