Just a few days after what we glimpsed, from the side, at the Valladolid wedding of her stepsister Stella del Carmen Banderas, the ever natural and spontaneous Dakota Johnson has left us a handful of juicy headlines in her latest interview. Speaking with the German edition of Vogue she confesses that her definitive ‘red flag’ when it comes to men is “that they wear flip-flops in public. Run away!” and she talks about her infinite love for her bangs: “I cut it myself when I was four and I loved it. I’ve had it my whole life, except between ten and fourteen.”
But the detail that surprised most is her memory of her “terrifying childhood”. Despite claiming to be the first to recognize the “incredible advantages” of being the daughter of two stars like Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, the actress has assured that her fame could sometimes be very hard and confusing for her when she was a child.
Dakota, whose grandmother is Tippi Hedren and whose stepfather was another great Hollywood name like Antonio Banderas, “grew up on the sets and was always surrounded by people who made movies.” But also by all the tricky situations that surround the seventh art. In her own words, “if you accept that as normal when you’re little, it can give you many complexes.”
Dakota Johnson and the Heavy Price of Fame
“I think I never really realized what Hollywood is,” says the 36-year-old actress, who was born in Texas “because my father was filming there.” Although she has always been clear that “the family business was different from, for example, my schoolmates’ mothers who went to the office every day,” she says she “always accepted it without further thought” because “it’s what we do. We have it in the blood.”
As a girl, Dakota was used to being harassed by paparazzi. In 1996, when she was only seven years old, her family, then comprising Melanie Griffith and her then-husband Antonio Banderas, was photographed during a stroll through Budapest. Recalling that day, she comments that “when I was little, there were moments when it was really terrifying and people tried to reach my mother in an aggressive and physically violent way, when we just wanted to go to the supermarket.”
She adds that as a child she accepted such situations as “normal” and only years later did she realize they were anything but normal. The star of Madame Web grew up with the idea that “the world knows your private life in a very invasive, rude and painful way,” however the actress clarifies: “There are disadvantages, but there are also incredible advantages, as with everything, I suppose.”
A Meteoric Career and a Mother’s Love
Now turned into one of Hollywood’s highest-grossing actresses, Dakota Johnson had to thank her mother for her debut on the big screen at nine years old, in the 1999 film Crazy in Alabama, directed by Antonio Banderas, despite the film receiving very negative reviews at the time. “But they didn’t let me work seriously until I finished high school,” says Dakota in the interview, who has always maintained a very close relationship with the Málaga-born actor.
Dakota Johnson in a tender moment with her mother.
At 17, the actress was named Miss Golden Globe 2006, an honor reserved exclusively for the children of celebrities, in which the ambassador hands the trophies to the winners and accompanies them offstage. A year later, she signed with the IMG agency to debut as a model and soon after began her acting career.
Speaking with great pride about Melanie Griffith, Dakota notes how it was her mother who taught her “how to take care of and love her body,” which gave her the confidence needed to pull off the daring looks she’s known for on red carpets. “It’s fun to wear a sexy dress.”, says the star of Materialistas, before adding that “and if the woman you admire most doesn’t tell you from a young age that you are perfect, intelligent, special, strong and brave, that can destroy you. It’s hard to retrain yourself to love yourself later. That was a great gift she gave me.”
