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Transcripted by Us
Dakota Johnson is a Hollywood royalty, dates Coldplay's Chris Martin, and finds playing sexual characters powerful. She talks to Elizabeth Day about success, therapy and the price of fame.
On her 18th birthday, Dakota Johnson got her first tattoo. It was illustrative of her Hollywood upbringing that her father, Don Johnson, was against the idea of his eldest daughter imprinting her doby parts with permanten ink, while her mother, Melanie Griffith, was the one who took her to the tattoo parlour to have "Acta non verba" inked in gothic script on her left inner arm. (Her famous parents separeted when she was six.)
"The tattoo means 'actions no words' in Latin," Dakota says now, sitting on a while upholstered armchair. She is barefoot, wearing ripped boyfriend jeand and an oversized caramel-coloured jumper, with one knee folded up beneath her and her rescue dog Zeppelin, snuffling affectionately around her leg.
"My father used to say that to me all the time because I was world-class procratinator. And he also said that if I ever got a tattoo he would disown me." She grins. "So, you know, I did it to sort of spite him."
It's a story that encapsulares much of what Dakota is about. She is a woman who knows her own mind, who understands the art of getting what she wants, and who was always clever enough to realise that her father could not possibly actually disown her for getting a tattoo when he was the on who taught her to follow through - that it's actions, not words, that count. I tell her the more I think about it, the more brilliant this story becomes. "Thank you," Dakota says.
The 28-year-old actor say "thank you", a lot: any time I comment on the success of a certain film (the fifty shades of grey trilogy, for example, in which Dakota played the sexually submissive Anastasia Stelee, helping the franchise rake in $140 million at the box office), or a particular performance, such as her new role as a gunslinging outlaw in Bad Times At The El Royale, in whichse stars alongside Jeff Bridges and Chris Hemsworth. She expresses her gratitude sincerely, as if perpetually surprised to be taken seriously. We are sitting in the front room of a rented beach house in Amagansett in the Hamptons. The windows face the sea and the quiet is broken only by the faraway sound of waves crashing against the shoreline. Inside, the bookshelves are filled with dog-eared copies of Evelyn Waugh and EM Forster novels. The corridor is lined with lemon-patterned wallpaper. There is an upright piano and a blue-striped rug and a guitar in one corner. Everything is tasteful, calm, relaxed.
Dakota usually lives in Los Angeles, which she loves ("because I love driving. I love music. And driving and music are just a really freat combination".), but comes here to get away whenever she needs a break fromthe relentless pace of the city. "It's very conveniente and lovely and mellow," she says, putting on some music at a low volume. "I'm obsessed with Charanga at the moment, it just makes me feel so fucking happy." I murmur approvingly. Later, back at my hotel, I google "Charanga." It's a traditional ensemble that plays Cuban dance music.
I hadn't known what to expect from Dakota. Part of me worried she might be spoilt by her childhood of entitlement and privilige. Her family tree reads like a serires of stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: her grandmother is Tippi Hedren, who starred in Hitchcock's The Birds and Marnie. Her father, Don Johnson, became a household name playing a louche detective in the cop serires Miami Vice; when her mother remarried in 1996 it was to film star Antonio Banderas. Dakota's first film role was the age of 10, when she and her half-sister, Stella, played daughters to ther real-life mother while Banderas directed. To say she is Hollywood royalty is to somewhat understate the case. But she is low-key and warm, and offers to make me coffee.
In fact, her upbringing was not as glamorous as it sounds. Instead, it was itinerant and dislocated. She split her time between her parents, who whre often traveling, so she was forced to change schools frequently. "I think that has made me really resilient and accepting," she says. "But it was difficult to go to a school for three months and the leave and never see those people again." The longest she stayed in one place was for a year while her father was filming in San Francisco and she attented an all-girls school. Each morning she put on her uniform, and she came home to a snack made by her stepmother. "It was very structured and I thrived." A pause. "And then we left." she smiles, a little sadly.
Dakota always knew she wanted to be an actor because she loved going on set with her parents so much - "It was the most fun. I loved to watch. I loved the smell. I truly think I'm on this planet to make movies" - but she was determined to make her own way. So at age of 18, she moved into a "sketchy" apartment in West Hollywood. "My car got broken into, like, four times." She used the money saved from a stint as model to pay the rent and started going to auditions.
"I really did work very hard to remain completely separate from [my family]. So I didn't take jobs because they came though them...It took a lot of work," she says. Were her parents worried about Dakota becoming an actor? "Yeah. Of course. I mean, it can be quite cur-throat and I think they didn't want me to be damaged. But [they were] also like, "You're going to do what you're going to do." And they knew that trying to keep me from wanting to make movies was kind of a lost cause."
One of her first jobs she booked was a memorable part in 2010's The Social Network, directed by David Fincher, playing a young Standford student who has a one-night stand with Napster's Sean Parker, played by Justin Timberlake. In 2012, she had parts in both The Five-Year Engagement and 21 Jump Street. Three years later, she started in Black Mass opposite Johnny Depp and took on the first of the Fifty Shades films, the franchise that would make her into a global star.
"At first it was extraordinarily exciting," she says of the Fifty Shades phenomenon. "The box-office numbers were shocking for the first film...everyone was happy. And then it also has been such an incredible platform for me to make film like Suspiria [a remake of a Seventies supernatural horror film, due to release later this year] and Bad Times At The El Royale, so it's been really positive for the most part. I have had some personal issue with it. I think as you would when you go from being a normal person to being a famous person, you go up and down. It's totally normal. But I feel very proud of completing them, of acomplishing that, or having that on my resumé. I guess...If i had a resumé," she jokes.
Dakota is a thoughtful, solicitous interviewee, talking in a way that suggests there are many things going on behind that beautiful film-star face with its hazel-green eyes and perfectly messed-up hair. I'd read that she'd been in therapy since the age of three - is that true?
"Yes" she laughs. "I was just playing with toys with someone in an office, you know...It's not news that my parents had some troubling moments (both Griffith and Johnson had well-documented drug and alcohol problems) and I think [they wanted] just to make sure that I was safe, because they cared. I love therapy. I don't know what I'd do without it. Truly. Everyone should be in therapy...I have been in therapy so long that I go to the therapist that the therapists go to. I can psychoanalyse myself and then I'm like, "Well, but I'm still here. So, now what??." She says that years of analysis have taught her "no one else is going to give you the answer. It's all within you, you just have to true, and sometimes that's painful."
There is a depth to Dakota, and perhaps a slight disquiet. It's a duality she brings to her roles, often playing with the shifting balance between a woman's sexualy and her power. And not just in Fifty Shades. In A Bigger Splash (2015), directed by Luca Guadagnino and costarring Tilda Swinton, Dakotawas magnetic as the slinky, seductive young woman that and ageing rock producer (played by Ralph Fienned) has only just discovered is his daughter.
"Playing sexual characters is very interesting to me," she says. "I find it powerful...I've been fascinated by women who are in touch with their sexualty, who are proud of it, who are not passive about it. I don't think that in order to be respected and in order to feel powerful that you need to be sexless." She rails against the double standards in society that mean a man can be aggressive and admired for it, whereas "if you're forthright [as a woman], if you're bossy, and you say what you mean and mean what you say, then sometimes you might be called a bith or a diva." She pause. "Which is wild."
She's "extremely supportive" of the #MeToo and Time's Up movements, despire never having experienced sexual harassment herdelf within the industry: "But when you have the foundation of hundreds of women, you feel supported, and you feel like you can survive."
It's something she has spoken about with her grandmother, who claims she was sexually assaulted by Alfred Hitchcock. The director also subjected Hedren to psychological and physical abuse - while filming The Birds, Hedren was attacked by real-life birdsin the famous phone booth scene despite being told mechanical ones would be used. Her face was cut by shards of glass and one bird almost pecked her eye. Allegefly, when she refused his sexual advances, Hitchcock effectively blackballed her from working for him or any other director.
When Time's up was formed, Dakota says, "My grandmother was like, "Guys! This has been going on forever!" It's terrible. She's so strong. She's so elegant. She's so smart and so talented. Her career was completely ruined because she said no. Because she stood up for herself. And so Hitchcock detroyed her. It's not okay to behave in a certain way in order to put yourself in a position of power or leverage. I think my grandmother is extremely supportive of the movement. My mother is extremely supportive. This does need to change." Johnson is well aware of the untidy narrative ofreal life and is drawn so characters who "are a little bit messy, full of feelings". Is he like that?
"Oh my God, yes! I feel everything, all the time. But I'd rather feel than not. That would be such a bleak existence." Has she experienced depression? "Yes," she says quietly. "I mean, it's a thing I think a lot of people struggle with. How could you not, when you're basically an empath for a living? It's not like every day I have to pop a bunch of pills and stuff, no. I'm not on madication for it. But, you know, people have ups and downs. I have ups and downs for sure."
She falls silent for a few moments, reaches down and scratches her dog behind te ears. He pants appreciatively. Beyond us is the echoing of the sea crashing against the sand. "I can't say that I don't have a relationship with depression because that would just be lying," Johnson continues. "And I don't want to appear perfect. I don't want to appear like I don't have problems or I don't deal with troubles because that's just not real. It's not truth. And I have a fanbase of young women, young men, and people struggle and it's totally fucking okay. It's beautiful. It's hard and heavy and beautiful."
Being famous is an odd conundrum for Johnson. On one hand, she has never wanted to do anything other than make films. On the other, being an actor involves opening herself up to internal emotion and external judgement. She grew up in the bubble of celebrity, but it is not something she enjoys.
"When you feel very exposed andinsecure, it's hard to be infront of a crowd of people. Especially when everyone with a cell phone is the press now. So you have to build callouses towards that. Going to a concert or a restaurant sometimes, you kind of just have to accept, okay, there's probably going to be, like, a photograph of me mid-bite in the news or something. I think it's really unhealthy. I don't go on the internet. I'm not in social media. I can't handle that. I would really tangle my brain up. I don't want to be in the news."
I can't help, then, that her boyfriend is alsosomeone who draws the attention of the paparazzi. For the past nine, months, Dakota has been dating Coldplay frontman (and former Mr Gwyneth Paltrow) Chris Martin. "I'm not going to talk about it," she says, "But I am very happy," and her face breaks into a wide, beaming smile that is quite possibly one ofthe sweetest things I've ever seen.
As an actor, Dakota has todo publicity, butt there are limits. She says that, as much as she'd love to, she won't go on holiday with her family, "unless we jump over mountains and the moon to make it private. I don't want to go on a beach and have a fucking drone take a picture. It's crazy! It's a total nightmare and that would send me into an emotional k-hole."
"What's a k-hole?" I ask, thinking it might be a cool new form of Cuban music. "Well, it's basically...You do - I think - a lot of ketamine, and then you don't come out of it," she replies politely. "Actually, I don't really know. I've never done it."
Damn, I joke. That was going to be my big scoop.
"Yeah", she whoops with laughter. "And then we did ketamine..."
Her keeneness to protect her privacy and the fact that she is here, on her own, surrounded by the vastness of sea and sky, makes me wonder if she's actually an introvert who has found herself in an industry fuelled by extroversion. Dakota's brow crinkles as she considers this. "No, I think I'm both," she says. "I think I'm wild and I'm small, you know? I don't have one way about me, which I think is normal...and allowed. I can't label myself as an extrovert or an introvert because I'm neither and I'm both."
She is aware that, after Fifty Shades, she has been catapulted into a different level of fame. For this reason that she is careful not to express too muh political opinion, worried it might be taken out of context. But when I ask if she's ever met President Trump, she can't help herself.
"I have not met Donald Trump. Thank God. I would need to baptise myself! I have no desire to meet him. I just don't want to absorb any of his energy at all...I'm not okay with the way things are going. I find myself waking up and feeling like I can't have a fully great day because of what's happening in the world, you know? It's too much - the potical enviroment, the bonder crisis, the hurricanes, the natural disasters, people stranded and abandoned...It's really disheartening."
She takes a breath, then lifts Zeppelin on to her lap, holding him upright asif he were a small child. Her hair mixes with his fur - the pair seem to have exactly the same golden highlights. She rubs his tummy and he wags his tail enthusiastically.
"He's 10 now, and he's become really mellow and he sleeps more than he ussually does," Dakota says, "Then on the beach, he's wild, like a maniac. But," she adds, putting him back on the floor, "he's a very wise creature."
Mellow. Wild. Wise. They say dogs grow to resemble their owners. I think this might just be a case in point.
"Yes" she laughs. "I was just playing with toys with someone in an office, you know...It's not news that my parents had some troubling moments (both Griffith and Johnson had well-documented drug and alcohol problems) and I think [they wanted] just to make sure that I was safe, because they cared. I love therapy. I don't know what I'd do without it. Truly. Everyone should be in therapy...I have been in therapy so long that I go to the therapist that the therapists go to. I can psychoanalyse myself and then I'm like, "Well, but I'm still here. So, now what??." She says that years of analysis have taught her "no one else is going to give you the answer. It's all within you, you just have to true, and sometimes that's painful."
There is a depth to Dakota, and perhaps a slight disquiet. It's a duality she brings to her roles, often playing with the shifting balance between a woman's sexualy and her power. And not just in Fifty Shades. In A Bigger Splash (2015), directed by Luca Guadagnino and costarring Tilda Swinton, Dakotawas magnetic as the slinky, seductive young woman that and ageing rock producer (played by Ralph Fienned) has only just discovered is his daughter.
"Playing sexual characters is very interesting to me," she says. "I find it powerful...I've been fascinated by women who are in touch with their sexualty, who are proud of it, who are not passive about it. I don't think that in order to be respected and in order to feel powerful that you need to be sexless." She rails against the double standards in society that mean a man can be aggressive and admired for it, whereas "if you're forthright [as a woman], if you're bossy, and you say what you mean and mean what you say, then sometimes you might be called a bith or a diva." She pause. "Which is wild."
She's "extremely supportive" of the #MeToo and Time's Up movements, despire never having experienced sexual harassment herdelf within the industry: "But when you have the foundation of hundreds of women, you feel supported, and you feel like you can survive."
It's something she has spoken about with her grandmother, who claims she was sexually assaulted by Alfred Hitchcock. The director also subjected Hedren to psychological and physical abuse - while filming The Birds, Hedren was attacked by real-life birdsin the famous phone booth scene despite being told mechanical ones would be used. Her face was cut by shards of glass and one bird almost pecked her eye. Allegefly, when she refused his sexual advances, Hitchcock effectively blackballed her from working for him or any other director.
When Time's up was formed, Dakota says, "My grandmother was like, "Guys! This has been going on forever!" It's terrible. She's so strong. She's so elegant. She's so smart and so talented. Her career was completely ruined because she said no. Because she stood up for herself. And so Hitchcock detroyed her. It's not okay to behave in a certain way in order to put yourself in a position of power or leverage. I think my grandmother is extremely supportive of the movement. My mother is extremely supportive. This does need to change." Johnson is well aware of the untidy narrative ofreal life and is drawn so characters who "are a little bit messy, full of feelings". Is he like that?
"Oh my God, yes! I feel everything, all the time. But I'd rather feel than not. That would be such a bleak existence." Has she experienced depression? "Yes," she says quietly. "I mean, it's a thing I think a lot of people struggle with. How could you not, when you're basically an empath for a living? It's not like every day I have to pop a bunch of pills and stuff, no. I'm not on madication for it. But, you know, people have ups and downs. I have ups and downs for sure."
She falls silent for a few moments, reaches down and scratches her dog behind te ears. He pants appreciatively. Beyond us is the echoing of the sea crashing against the sand. "I can't say that I don't have a relationship with depression because that would just be lying," Johnson continues. "And I don't want to appear perfect. I don't want to appear like I don't have problems or I don't deal with troubles because that's just not real. It's not truth. And I have a fanbase of young women, young men, and people struggle and it's totally fucking okay. It's beautiful. It's hard and heavy and beautiful."
Being famous is an odd conundrum for Johnson. On one hand, she has never wanted to do anything other than make films. On the other, being an actor involves opening herself up to internal emotion and external judgement. She grew up in the bubble of celebrity, but it is not something she enjoys.
"When you feel very exposed andinsecure, it's hard to be infront of a crowd of people. Especially when everyone with a cell phone is the press now. So you have to build callouses towards that. Going to a concert or a restaurant sometimes, you kind of just have to accept, okay, there's probably going to be, like, a photograph of me mid-bite in the news or something. I think it's really unhealthy. I don't go on the internet. I'm not in social media. I can't handle that. I would really tangle my brain up. I don't want to be in the news."
I can't help, then, that her boyfriend is alsosomeone who draws the attention of the paparazzi. For the past nine, months, Dakota has been dating Coldplay frontman (and former Mr Gwyneth Paltrow) Chris Martin. "I'm not going to talk about it," she says, "But I am very happy," and her face breaks into a wide, beaming smile that is quite possibly one ofthe sweetest things I've ever seen.
As an actor, Dakota has todo publicity, butt there are limits. She says that, as much as she'd love to, she won't go on holiday with her family, "unless we jump over mountains and the moon to make it private. I don't want to go on a beach and have a fucking drone take a picture. It's crazy! It's a total nightmare and that would send me into an emotional k-hole."
"What's a k-hole?" I ask, thinking it might be a cool new form of Cuban music. "Well, it's basically...You do - I think - a lot of ketamine, and then you don't come out of it," she replies politely. "Actually, I don't really know. I've never done it."
Damn, I joke. That was going to be my big scoop.
"Yeah", she whoops with laughter. "And then we did ketamine..."
Her keeneness to protect her privacy and the fact that she is here, on her own, surrounded by the vastness of sea and sky, makes me wonder if she's actually an introvert who has found herself in an industry fuelled by extroversion. Dakota's brow crinkles as she considers this. "No, I think I'm both," she says. "I think I'm wild and I'm small, you know? I don't have one way about me, which I think is normal...and allowed. I can't label myself as an extrovert or an introvert because I'm neither and I'm both."
She is aware that, after Fifty Shades, she has been catapulted into a different level of fame. For this reason that she is careful not to express too muh political opinion, worried it might be taken out of context. But when I ask if she's ever met President Trump, she can't help herself.
"I have not met Donald Trump. Thank God. I would need to baptise myself! I have no desire to meet him. I just don't want to absorb any of his energy at all...I'm not okay with the way things are going. I find myself waking up and feeling like I can't have a fully great day because of what's happening in the world, you know? It's too much - the potical enviroment, the bonder crisis, the hurricanes, the natural disasters, people stranded and abandoned...It's really disheartening."
She takes a breath, then lifts Zeppelin on to her lap, holding him upright asif he were a small child. Her hair mixes with his fur - the pair seem to have exactly the same golden highlights. She rubs his tummy and he wags his tail enthusiastically.
"He's 10 now, and he's become really mellow and he sleeps more than he ussually does," Dakota says, "Then on the beach, he's wild, like a maniac. But," she adds, putting him back on the floor, "he's a very wise creature."
Mellow. Wild. Wise. They say dogs grow to resemble their owners. I think this might just be a case in point.
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