The Stunning Transformation Of Dakota Johnson

Dakota Johnson is Hollywood royalty, but it's easy to forget the daughter of the legendary Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson isn't as ubiquitous on screen as some of her contemporaries. Still, the lady who made Fifty Shades of Grey her breakout in spite of everything working against it, similar to Kristen Stewart's take-notice spin on Twilight's Bella, is only just getting started.

In fact, it's likely that no matter how much praise she racks up Dakota Johnson will always feel like a bit of a pretender by her own admission. Whereas some famous kids coast by, she's eager to impress in her own right, and while many are content with living off their names, Johnson wants to forge her own path. The actress may not have grown up in front of our eyes via Disney shows and cereal commercials, but she has certainly transformed into a stunning woman over the years.

Due to the nature of her parents' work, as well as splitting her time between two different households, young Dakota Johnson found it difficult to put roots down. Speaking to Vogue in 2017, the actress, who began therapy at age 3, admitted to not being raised anywhere in particular, tagging along with her folks on sets with school tutors or nannies along for the ride. Neither schools nor friendships stuck.

The media circus surrounding her parents' divorce, as well as their own issues, was tough to contend with, too. "I was so consistently unmoored and discombobulated. I didn't have an anchor anywhere," Johnson explained. Studying presented its own set of problems, as she was so used to being on set. She admitted, "I never learned how to learn the way you're supposed to as a kid. I thought, Why do I have to go to school on time? What's the point when you're living in Budapest for six months while your stepdad films Evita and you go to school in your hotel room?"

In spite of the issues with her parents, becoming an actress was always Dakota Johnson's goal. It did, however, surprise her father who told The Guardian in 2019, "I didn't know that she wanted to do it. She hadn't shared that with us. So she's 18, I think, at the time and I'm going: 'OK, I'll just keep my eye on her and reach out and catch her.'" However, he soon realized she was serious, acknowledging, "She has the goods. She's a wonderful actress, and in some ways better than her mother [Melanie Griffith] and me."

Dakota Johnson's grandmother Tippi Hedren confirmed with Vogue in 2017 that the family's influence wasn't to blame either. She explained, "I didn't push Melanie into films, and she didn't push Dakota. I think neither of us is the type to push." Regardless, the grandmother and granddaughter don't tend to talk shop. "But I have told her that I think it's important to do different things in life, to have a sense of balance," Hedren noted. 

On Johnson's part, she told Vogue simply, "I thought, this is just what my family does. It's like, my dad's a lawyer, so I'm a lawyer."

As it happened, just a few short years after being Miss Golden Globe (via Vogue), Dakota Johnson nabbed a role in David Fincher's 2010 Facebook drama The Social Network. Although it was a small part as Amelia Ritter, a flirty paramour who got intimate with Justin Timberlake's Sean Parker character, Johnson made a major impression in the film that starred the likes of Jesse Eisenberg, who portrayed founder Mark Zuckerberg. She proudly told Interview magazine in 2012, "When I did The Social Network, David Fincher told me that I managed to make a thankless character pretty awesome."

Johnson considered this the nicest thing anybody had ever said about her work, though she's probably heard much more flattering stuff in the years since. She explained the man's words meant so much because she thought he was "really cool."

Notably, The Social Network also starred Andrew Garfield, Brenda Song, Rooney Mara, and Armie Hammer.

Fifty Shades of Grey's Anastasia Steele might have been the role of a lifetime for Dakota Johnson, but it wasn't without controversy. The film currently sits at 25 percent on review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes, capturing the overwhelmingly negative reaction from critics. Fans of the book flooded cinemas, however, to the tune of $569 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo. Johnson remains loyal to the franchise that made her a household name, telling Vogue in 2015 that "even if it's commercial and mainstream, the subject matter isn't." She noted, "In that way I can do something mass but stay true to my weird interests."

Of the character of Anastasia herself, the actress explained, "She's hyperintelligent and hypersexual and very tough and very loving, and her character has so many different aspects that don't normally make sense in one person. I tried to amplify them all." James Foley, director of sequels Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, said approvingly of his leading lady, "She has a very sensitive bulls**t meter, so if she does something that is the least bit unreal she just stops herself. She is just bizarrely instinctual about it all."  

Most actors, aside from maybe Tom Hardy, tend not to cover themselves in tattoos, lest it hinder their progress in front of the camera. But not Dakota Johnson, who, by her own admission, got very into covering herself with ink until it was too late to go back. In a 2016 interview with Net-a-Porter, she proudly revealed a quote from Aldous Huxley novel Island that was tattooed in white and which matches sister Stella Banderas' own tattoo: "Lightly, my darling."

Still, Johnson admitted, "Some of the others I'm not so proud of." The actress shared, "I went through a phase where I loved tattoos, and I loved the feeling of getting tattooed. But now I've outgrown them mostly, and because I always have to cover them for jobs, God, they're annoying!" Now that she's super famous and in demand, the actress understands that she "really should have listened to everyone," noting, "But therein lies my problem in life!" 

Not content with simply descending from Hollywood royalty or effortlessly straddling the line between indie darling and blockbuster breakout star, Dakota Johnson also finds time to be a passionate animal rights advocate. It's noted in a 2015 Vogue profile that her grandmother, Tippi Hedren, took to rescuing wild animals after being treated badly by Hollywood and Alfred Hitchcock, in particular. Melanie Griffith, meanwhile, "famously grew up with a lion" living in the family home, and Johnson remembers rescue elephants in her family's backyard. 

Hedren's ranch boasts "some small cats and some big cats," according to Johnson, namely "lions and tigers, a black leopard, and a three-legged cheetah." In an interview a year later, Johnson proudly told Vogue, "My grandmother is one of the most extraordinary women in the world. She's more quick-witted and wise than anyone I know." Demonstrably confident about following in her iconic grandmother's footsteps, the actress revealed, "She still walks around the reserve at night and checks the tigers."

As it turned out, Dakota Johnson's 30th birthday party was the source of some bizarre controversy when TV host Ellen DeGeneres publicly called her out on air for failing to invite her, only for Johnson to immediately deadpan that DeGeneres actually was invited and opted not to show up. The story was a major source of hilarity online for the better part of a week, with everybody and their uncle chiming in on who was really pulling the strings behind the scenes. 

It made for an intensely uncomfortable interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, but Johnson more than held her own, calmly setting the record straight. Naturally, the short-lived "feud" was more mindless gossip than anything else, though an interesting revelation came about when internet sleuths discovered DeGeneres was with former president George W. Bush on the day of Johnson's party. As Time reported, it caused quite a stir online.