Dakota Johnson is not like other celebrities. On late night television, she comes across as sardonic and smart and unpredictable, as if she is secretly conspiring with all the regular folk in the audience. The daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith , I imagine she spent her childhood flitting between film studios and glamorous dinner parties, making well-timed, withering remarks at all the toupés and the optic-white veneers that get normalised in Hollywood circles.
She’s seen behind the veil and thought, “I’m cringing for you”. And then she did the most cringeworthy thing possible and played Anastasia Steele. Perhaps that’s why Johnson seems so blasé about maintaining Los Angeles pleasantries, she can see the funny side to all this nonsense.
“ Aren’t you supposed to let people talk on this show? ” she once asked Jimmy Fallon, who is known to finish his guest’s sentences. Then, when taking a video team on a tour of her house, she encountered a surprise bowl of artfully arranged limes and said: “ I love limes, I love them. They’re great.
I love them so much and I like to present them like this in my house .” And then, of course, there is the much-memed smirk: “ That’s not the truth, Ellen ”. This knowing awkwardness (combined with a bohemian fringe that belongs to some kind of How To Be A French Girl manual), has made Johnson a people’s favourite.
It’s also led to Gucci ambassadorships and co-signs from Chanel and Stella McCartney and.