Though it seems Dakota Johnson has been famous for years, the much-admired Fifty Shades of Grey actress is still just 32 – but admits she sometimes “feels 48”.
The daughter of famed actors Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, and granddaughter of Hitchcock favourite Tippi Hedren, Dakota has packed a great deal into her relatively short life to date, taking her first role alongside her Mum in Crazy in Alabama, aged 10.
She told Elle magazine: “‘I feel both 48 and 26. I’ve had a lot of ‘life’ in my life. I had a lot of life really young, so I think I feel older.”
Her partner – Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, 44 – is 12 years older, but the pair have been together for over four years, and Dakota is stepmother to his children with Gwyneth Paltrow: Apple, 17, and Moses, 15.
Though intensely private about their relationship, Dakota explained: “We’ve been together for quite a while and we go out sometimes, but we both work so much that it’s nice to be at home and be cosy and private. Most of the partying (with friends) takes place inside of my house.”
She laughed at her sensible approach, in contrast to her parents’ Eighties and Nineties partying.
“I’m like, it’s Friday! I should get slightly f*cked up. And sometimes I do!” she said.
“But I’ve been working so much that drinking tea and watching TV is appealing to me.”
The couple are one of the A-list’s strongest romances, living and working together in Malibu.
Last year, Johnson directed Coldplay’s music video for Cry, Cry Cry, and and added that she curated “every single detail” and “gave it everything”.
“When I work, I’m constantly thinking about the job,” she said. “It takes up so much of my brain. Not all of my projects are only good messages but all of them have a little bit of something that makes me feel like it’s an OK thing to pour my heart into.”
Dakota also opened up to Harper’s Bazaar last year on her mental health issues.
Dakota’s mum and step-father, Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas. (Sipa USA)
“I’ve struggled with depression since I was young — since I was 15 or 14,” she said.
“That was when, with the help of professionals, I was like, ‘Oh, this is a thing I can fall into’. But I’ve learnt to find it beautiful because I feel the world.
“I guess I have a lot of complexities, but they don’t pour out of me. I don’t make it anyone else’s problem.”
Johnson also spoke about her latest co-star in The Lost Daughter, Olivia Colman.
“Well, I was like, ‘I wonder what she’s going to be like?’” she recalled. “But we loved each other. She’s so maternal and embracing and always wants to hang out and drink wine and talk.”
The 78th Venice Film Festival – Screening of the film
With co-star Colman and Director Maggie Gyllenhaal earlier this year. (REUTERS/Yara Nardi)
Of her own mother, now married to Antonio Banderas, Johnson said, “She was able to be a nurturing, generous, loving mother, and do her job and be an amazing partner to her husbands.
“But there were also really dark times. So the point is to say that nothing is perfect all the time – nothing.”
