When Dakota Johnson left for Greece to film Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut The Lost Daughter, she wasn’t yet aware that a life-changing year awaited her. Months earlier, the prolific actress, still best known for leading the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise, found passion projects including Lost Daughter being delayed due to COVID, while others were still gestating. By the time production on Lost Daughter finally commenced last September, on the Greek island of Spetses, Johnson’s schedule was stacked—she’d go on to work on three more projects back-to-back, without a break, over 12 full months.
Fortunately, she started the run with this one. As the 31-year-old Johnson tells me from a luxe condo in Telluride (where the film had just made its U.S. premiere), The Lost Daughter unlocked something in her—a new artistic path forward, a new window into her potential. Since Fifty Shades, she’s done the work in indies like A Bigger Splash and The Peanut Butter Falcon, but is currently receiving career-best notices for her tricky turn in Gyllenhaal’s uncompromising portrait of motherhood. Johnson plays Nina, a young mother on vacation with her family, and an enigmatic object of fascination to protagonist Leda (Olivia Colman). As Lost Daughter develops, Leda and Nina form a tenuous, shaky bond that hurtles toward a surprising, intense end.
