STAR IS SET TO
CINEMA fans have seen a lot of Dakota Johnson down the years... not least in Fifty Shades of Grey.
The actress admits she likes to bare her soul in every part she plays.
And it’s that naked ambition which now sees her take a very different direction and a step further towards Hollywood greatness.
Dakota – daughter of acting veterans Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson – plays Anne Elliot, the lead role in a comical adaptation of Jane Austen’s love story Persuasion.
Hollywood is calling 2022 “the summer of Dakota”, as she also stars in and produced coming-of-age comedy Cha Cha Real Smooth, co-starring Cooper Raiff.
The success is little surprise to those who have seen the rise of the 32-year-old, who lives in California with rock star boyfriend Chris Martin, 45.
Dakota pretty much grew up on film sets and knew she wanted to be an actress even as a child.
She says: “I was obsessed. I always wanted to be an actress. When my parents were on set, I wanted to be on set with them.
“I just loved movies. I was always watching movies. I still love watching movies and I’m so lucky I get to make movies. I didn’t know any different.
“I thought, this is just what my family does. My dad tried to make me go to college, but I refused. I wanted to act and that was that.”
ELITE
Dakota was born in Texas, where her Miami Vice star dad Don, 72, was filming.
Her own acting career started at 10 with a role alongside mum Mel, 64, in Crazy in Alabama.
She had a small role in 2010 movie The Social Network – about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg – and a raft of film and TV roles followed.
But it was as Anastasia Steele, opposite Jamie Dornan in the raunchy Fifty Shades of Grey series, that she joined Hollywood’s elite – thankfully, she says, without being typecast.
She says: “There’s not a lot like those kinds of movies, so there hasn’t been a lot of big naked franchises coming my way!
“If I had known at the time that’s what it was going to be like, I don’t think anyone would’ve done it. It would’ve been like, ‘Oh, this is psychotic.’
“But I don’t regret it. I learn so much on every project. I just hope I get to keep doing this job. I’m not going to steer away from anything.”
Persuasion, a witty and modern Netflix adaptation of Jane Austen’s final novel, takes Dakota in a new direction.
There is a twinkle in the eye of her character Anne – and plenty of asides to the camera.
She explains: “It was wildly fun. I was drawn to the occasionally modernised language and themes, speaking directly to the audience, and the fact a strongwilled woman remains as much a topic of discussion these days as it was then.
“Doing a Jane Austen film is a dream
My parents were on set when I was a kid... so I just wanted to act too DAKOTA JOHNSON ON HER HOLLYWOOD DESTINY
and there are only a few of them, so I feel incredibly lucky.”
Feisty Dakota, who famously put chat show host Ellen DeGeneres in her place during an interview, impressed her co-stars.
Richard E Grant, who plays her vain father Sir Walter Elliot, reveals: “Dakota’s very disciplined. Considering who her parents are, you project an idea of somebody coming from that amount of privilege. You think there might be a Paris Hilton element to her character.
“But there wasn’t. Instead, I think what that background has given her is a great assurance of who she is. She’s 32, but she has a no-s***-Sherlock approach. And