$2 billion franchise star. Celebrity daughter and granddaughter. The sex symbol of the new time … However, these facts do not characterize Dakota Johnson. They don’t say anything about it being genuine. About a girl who puts free will above all else. About an actress who welcomes «nude» scenes as a challenge. And about a man who experienced loss and even homelessness.
She was an alien when she appeared in front of the hall of the Venice Film Festival: a straight back, an impenetrable face, a strict geometry of a red dress on a red carpet, a restrained hairstyle. I was one of those who saw in her phenomenon closeness, the mystery of another world, and even a coldish danger.
But it turned out that she was playing a role — the role of Dakota Johnson on the red carpet of the film festival, where the horror program starring her. It was «Suspiria», recently released in Russian cinemas — a bloody story about femininity and guilt.
And there is nothing mysterious about a thin tall girl who laced her legs in white trousers on a wicker chair on the veranda of the hotel. On the contrary, it is all peace and disposition towards the world. Soft hair, smile, restraint in gestures. Openness, cozy ordinariness…
I’m even shocked, to be honest. I was waiting for an interview with a spoiled young star in scarlet, but I met an ordinary girl in white. And I can’t switch to it in any way … The pause dragged on a little. «Well, ask!» Johnson says. In her intonation — lively impatience, not time saving. And I have to explain.
Psychologies: You see, you are so different from your heroines that your thoughts scatter. And the first question I want to ask is whether there is something in common between you. And he is very banal.
Dakota Johnson: Exactly. I don’t even know where it comes from — Meryl Streep is usually asked what she thinks about her heroines. Somehow she is an actress. And me only as far as I am — they are.
Do you think they still don’t admit that you’re an actress?
Yes, but I’m working on it. You noticed?
Oh yeah!
No, I understand: a girl from a family where all the actors (Dakota’s grandmother — Tippi Hedren, Hitchcock actress; mother — star of the 80-90s Melanie Griffith; father, Don Johnson, starring in the television series Miami Vice «; stepfather — Antonio Banderas. — Approx. ed.). It’s clear: she became an actress due to family inertia and now she must prove that she really is an actress.
I really couldn’t imagine any other life. I spent all my childhood on my mother’s or father’s shootings. Because after the second divorce — you know that my parents were married, then separated, and 10 years later they reunited, I was born, and they divorced again? .. So, they shared custody of me, and I spent two weeks everyone has it. And on their shootings and rehearsals. Then my sister and mother and I went to shoot Antonio …
I rely on luck, coincidence of circumstances. And I believe in chance — in their lucky signals
I recently looked at our old photos here: I am 10 years old. We — me, mom and Antonio — are standing on the Oscar red carpet. I am freckles, curls, a marriageable Barbie dress, adult platform sandals, a stupid smile of a girl in the spotlight … and like a fish in water!
Or later: I’m 15 years old, my mother is holding Stella’s hand, my youngest is my beloved! — sister, daughter Antonio, she is 7. Stella is shy, her mother has a forced smile. Antonio smiles, but he’s on the red carpet at work, I know. And I … the very naturalness, and not even any teenage constraint, although I remember myself then: I didn’t feel very comfortable at school, in life, in my skin … But here — as if I was created for the red carpet. But this is not so at all. It was just the way I imagined my life back then.
Like a solid red carpet?
No-o-o. Not! I didn’t see myself as anyone but an actress… Listen… I just now had an idea: what if this kind of feeling can replace the ability? Maybe if you know what your purpose is, the abilities somehow activate themselves? Not? Well, in general, they didn’t take me to Juilliard then (Julliard School is a prestigious US educational institution in the field of music and arts, including stage art. — Approx. ed.).
Oh, my dad cooked me. After 20 minutes of screaming — when I told him that I decided to become an actress. That is, at first, my mother buzzed for two weeks: “You don’t understand what kind of life this is. What kind of constant ghost of poverty is this, what kind of addiction is this, ”etc. Well, then dad shouted that it was nonsense to choose such a profession. Shouting, he decided that he would cook me himself. Steve Martin, my dad’s friend, wrote a monologue for me. Very funny. But when I read it at the entrance exam, no one laughed. Then I was asked to sing, and from my singing I got bored myself. In general, they did not take it, and rightly so.
The more I fear something, the faster I rush towards it.
I won’t say that I had any special arrogance, but even those few milligrams that I had were knocked off me even then. And I came to my usual state: I am completely unsure of myself. I rely on luck, coincidence of circumstances, temperaments. And I believe in accidents — in their lucky signals or warnings.
But I have a property — the more I am afraid of something, the faster I rush towards it. For example, I’m afraid of samples like fire. But that is why I try out for different roles much more actively than my colleagues. Although before each casting my whole body just reduces, I’m so scared.
Why are you unsure of yourself?
You misunderstood me — I do not think that everyone should be confident in themselves. On the contrary, I think that being self-confident is not very good. Not critical. Smug. We can do something — it’s great. But to assume that your data or skills are perfect …
Unconventional…
But there is nothing traditional in my personal baggage. As a child, I moved with my parents and moved endlessly between them. Traveled between families and felt comfortable everywhere. But I never had a real home. You know, grown-up children are sometimes drawn home. Where they left for adulthood. And when I wanted to return home, what I remembered as home was simply gone: my mother moved or my father decided to live not in the city, but on a ranch.
And now, when I was about to anchor in Los Angeles, I bought a house from the middle of the last century — not a historical object, but just a house with its own history. I now live in it — a small one, why do I need a large one, but it was built in the 1950s. As if one of my parents grew up in it and then gave it to me.
Don’t you think that you had to prove that you are an actress, and not just the daughter of stars, since your breakthrough turned out to be associated with a role in which your appearance played an important role? Because you owe your success to your face and…
The body?
Well, yes.
Well, yes. Do you think there is something shameful here?
No. But I mean, the first big role — and such a degree of exposure, just purely physical …
Is it? And it seems to me that in Fifty Shades of Grey, the nakedness, the lack of clothes, is just a metaphor. The fact that in love we are all naked. Listen, I hate this kind of scene when people make love, and they are wearing some T-shirts, bras! Well, that’s hypocrisy! People make love naked! And Fifty Shades is about freedom. About a conscious choice in love. I was even surprised when they asked me if I condemn my heroine — after all, for the sake of love, she abandoned her own will. But this is nonsense! She makes a conscious choice. She chooses love.
But wasn’t that quantity and quality of sex scenes a challenge for you?
When it comes to filming without clothes, I tell myself like a cold professional: an actor’s lack of a suit is just another suit. And I have been dancing for a long time, 10 years… And for dancers, the body is a tool, they are not characterized by sentiment… But actually playing these scenes… You see, for an actor this is not a challenge at all because of nudity. There is no serious makeup that will play something for you. There is no costume — an additional characteristic of the hero. There is only you, and you can be an empty place. Call.
That’s why I even love such scenes — they require pure, unalloyed acting. But as a woman, it’s easier for me. Jamie (Jamie Dornan is the male lead in the Fifty Shades . Being naked is a vulnerability. It is more difficult for a man to get used to her, vulnerability is humiliating for him.
It’s funny: in the wake of the wild success of Fifty Shades of Grey, there were rumors that we couldn’t stand each other, and at the same time, the tabloids wrote that we were having a secret affair. And I was asked endlessly about it. Jamie — no, he had a wife and then already had a daughter, somehow uncomfortable. And me — with might and main.
And what did you answer?
She replied that yes — we can not stand each other. And yes, we are having an affair. Yes, such a novel. You are adults, you must understand: adult relationships are different.
Do you consider yourself an adult? You are only 29, but you are already definitely, believe me, a real actress, and have played significant roles, and are independent, of course. Are you an adult?
I think so. That is, I believe that we become adults when we gain the ability to look at ourselves from the outside. It’s strange to me that sometimes actors are so… selfish and completely incapable of seeing themselves through other people’s eyes. But this profession is all about it: about looking at yourself and making yourself different.
I really did it in The Big Splash. There, my heroine is 17. Appearance — Bambi. Character — anaconda. I wanted to play in it all the darkest things that can be in a beautiful woman, everything that I am afraid of and that … not my word, but I will say — I hate it. She interferes in the lives of others, brings chaos to them simply because it’s funny. Because it can. She uses her sexuality to destroy. I see these girls for whom sexuality is a weapon. And I don’t understand why they are so persistently showing themselves.
Weren’t you like this at 17?
Was not. I don’t use anything as a weapon — I don’t like to fight. And then … you see, I grew up in a family of strong women. Beautiful, but also brave. Grandmother played in Hitchcock’s The Birds and Marnie, but broke off the contract with the studio when Hitchcock’s harassment became unbearable. He threatened that he would close the doors to the cinema for her forever. And she herself decided to leave the cinema. And she became what she had long wanted to be — a defender of the rights of wild animals.
To promote her ideas, Grandma decided to create the film Roar. My mother played the main female role. And more than a hundred lions, tigers, panthers were shot in the film … The production took 11 years — the film was released in 1981. During filming, at least 70 members of the group suffered from predators. Mom’s eye and skin around the orbit were restored, the tiger literally scalped the operator, the grandmother’s husband, the director, the lion hit with his paw, and he developed gangrene.
But the grandmother released the film and was not afraid to involve her daughter in such a dangerous enterprise. And my mother was not afraid to act in it … So I grew up with such women that boasting of my, so to speak, attractiveness was … well, just bad taste!
Her three roles before «Fifty Shades of Grey»
This film trilogy made Dakota Johnson a star. But before her, the actress had already gained fame as a “stealer of episodes”, since she more than once overshadowed her more venerable colleagues with her small roles. In which Johnson, among other things, found an exceptional comedic gift.
Five years before Fifty Shades, 20-year-old Johnson, on David Fincher’s The Social Network, stole, as they say in Hollywood, an episode from Justin Timberlake. She played his sex partner and was needed in order to inform his hero that there is such a thing — Facebook (an extremist organization banned in Russia). But in this Stanford third-year student, a smart-ass and a simpleton at the same time, there was so much life that Dakota was noticed by both the public and the audience.
In the romantic comedy A Little Married by Nicholas Stoller, she plays the cheerful, frivolous, kind and scandalous Audrey, the girlfriend of the hero, who broke up with the main woman of his life before meeting her. “This role is “shadow”. I, the comic, had to set off the serious and beautiful Emily Blunt, ”says Johnson now. She clearly did not plan a competition with the main character. But she did it.
The character Johnson practically closes the door behind the mega-sitcom The Office (9 seasons and over 200 episodes). In the most recent episode, she played a new employee of the Dunder-Mifflin company, a symbol of the end of her golden days: the new generation in her face is clearly not inclined to consider the office a second home.