Do you know The Birthday Book?’ asks Dakota Johnson. She is sitting at a candlelit table; blue eyes inquisitive, fringe so expertly grazing her eyebrows that its maintenance looks like a full-time job. ‘It’s this huge book that goes through every day of the year and tells you about yourself, and other people born on your birthday. I was born on the Day of the Incorrigibles,’ she says. ‘And I’m like, That makes sense.’
We’ve been inside at Shutters on the Beach for an hour, the winter sun just setting over the Santa Monica sand. Johnson was late – something to do with talking to Andrew Garfield and the LA traffic – and I was recovering from a party the night before, so we started by addressing each of our needs.
‘We should probably order fries because you’re hungover,’ she says, after getting a tea for herself. She holds the warm drink in her hands while she explains more about what kind of person she is, the essence of which can apparently be traced to October 4, 1989, the day she was born. For one thing, she baulks at authority. ‘I do not like stupid rules, like rules for rules’ sake. Or people implementing rules because they’re seeking power,’ she says firmly. ‘If a chair is marked “Do not sit here” I’m like, “Why the f*ck not?” I don’t know where this came from and why it got so bad,’ she says, shaking her head.
As a presence, however, Johnson seems the opposite of incorrigible: absurdly serene, with a tranquillising voice that seems to lower your heart rate as she talks. This preternatural calm is surprising given her upbringing, which involved high-profile parents (Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson), grandparent (Sixties film star Tippi Hedren) and step-parent (Antonio Banderas), and the fact that she was raised on film sets throughout the world. She learnt to drive on the sound stage where her dad filmed the cop drama Nash Bridges.
Unlike most humans – famous and otherwise – Johnson seems comfortable with gaping silence; whether in a conversation that’s very public (see her Ellen interview, famous on social media for the extended silences between host and guest), or between two people splitting fries. She lingers, deep in a pause for what feels like an entire minute after I ask why she can endure the kind of quiet that makes most people writhe. Finally, she breaks, but seems puzzled. ‘Well, what would I do to fight silence?’
It’s not just her restraint. Johnson emits the kind of unhurried composure that makes you feel like you might enjoy drifting off to sleep while she reads GPS directions aloud. Does she know that her Architectural Digest house tour – in which she languidly discusses her mohair couch and a table made from the wood from Winston Churchill’s yacht – is compared to ASMR? ‘I was so hungover making that video,’ she says. ‘That’s probably why I was so calm.’ But where does it come from? She considers the question.
‘Well, my parents are… I don’t think I get it from them, they were wild when I was growing up,’ she says, obliquely referencing Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith’s tribulations with addiction and partying in the Nineties. ‘I think maybe I’m guarded,’ she says. ‘And that comes off as serene.’
Johnson is indeed guarded, and clearly skilled in withholding information that could wind up as tabloid kindling. Since 2017, she has been dating Coldplay’s Chris Martin and when in public, the couple attract hordes of paparazzi on both sides of the Atlantic. They’ve sought out a quiet existence in a modern Cape Cod-style house in Point Dume, Malibu. ‘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 takes place inside my house,’ she says of friends who mostly seem in or adjacent to the entertainment industry.
At 32, Johnson tussles with the liminal space between young and not-so-young. ‘I feel both 48 and 26,’ she says. ‘I’ve had a lot of life in my life. I had a lot of life really young, so I think I feel older.’ This seems consistent, I note, with the fact that after this Friday-night interview, she’ll be heading home to watch Elle Fanning in season two of The Great. Johnson laughs. ‘I know! I’m like, it’s Friday! I should get slightly f*cked up. And sometimes I do! But I’ve been working so much that drinking tea and watching TV is appealing to me.’
