Dakota Johnson is dancing in a red sundress, giant gold hoops dangling from her ears. She was at the Telluride Film Festival earlier this year to premiere her latest film, The Lost Daughter, written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, when Netflix offered to host a dinner for the cast . “Maggie said, ‘Instead of dinner, let’s have a dance party,'” Johnson said. So they invited everyone from the other films playing at the festival to a local restaurant. local, and it quickly became the hottest event in town. Benedict Cumberbatch, Jamie Dornan and Kirsten Dunst all partied as Whitney Houston spoke enthusiastically from the speakers.
There’s a lot to celebrate. Just 24 hours earlier, The Lost Daughter had premiered to great acclaim at the Venice Film Festival. After the screening (Johnson forgot to bring her glasses, but she said, “I thought it was beautiful”), there was time for a quick glass of champagne before she and Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard boarded the plane. Head to Telluride to do it all again. There’s a lot to take in. The film, an intimate portrait of complicated women making unspeakable choices (also starring Olivia Colman), was shot in a pinch on a tiny island. of Greece at the height of the pandemic, a world away from the modern world. festival circuit. Now it’s suddenly being mentioned as a contender for the grand prize. There’s also the matter of just getting out of the house.
At one point, Johnson and her director linked arms on the makeshift dance floor and stared longingly into each other’s eyes. The photos went viral on Twitter, as Johnson’s red carpet moments were repeated during The Lost Daughter’s press tour, but Johnson shrugged and said, “I didn’t even realize there was a photographer there.”
Not that she would do anything differently. Why should she? Johnson may be the perfect person to lead us into the Great Reset. She’s a third-generation Hollywood star who fronted the most controversial film franchise in years, Fifty Shades of Gray, then refused to let either of those things define her. We are talking about a woman who has a seductive appearance but is also coldly mischievous; she publicly (and hilariously) criticized Ellen DeGeneres for lying about a birthday party and living to tell the tale, and she recently revealed that Jimmy Kimmel is a great neighbor, “ except they throw a lot of parties and they don’t invite me.” Kimmel will no doubt update his guest list to include the Oscar hopeful, who is currently preparing to direct his first film and, if the New York Post is to be believed, recently has moved into a $12.5 million house in Malibu with her rock star boyfriend, Chris Martin. , who called her “my universe” on stage in October, a rare public confession for the private couple. Can you blame him? She is the girl of the moment in this very strange moment.
Dance parties would become a tradition for The Lost Daughter team, who failed again after a screening at the New York Film Festival in October. Johnson and Sarsgaard shared their playlist with the DJ at Altro Paradiso in Soho. “There were a lot of Talking Heads, Cranberries,” said Johnson, who — some time later, back at the hotel — used a poke kit to create Colman’s first tattoo. (“Maybe I was completely captivated by this beautiful person and wanted her to think I was cool,” Colman says. “Or maybe it was my midlife crisis.”) Summary joy returned after receiving this vaccine, Johnson said, “The problem is people are not behaving normally. If you go to a party, you will get angry.
Nothing about Johnson’s path can be considered normal. This life and career? They feel both destined and impossible. She first appeared on the big screen as Justin Timberlake in the film The Social Network, but the public already knew her vaguely. She is Miss Golden Globe 2006, granddaughter of Tippi Hedren, daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, stepdaughter of Antonio Banderas. She was the little girl who – at six years old – delivered Madonna’s Easter basket on the set of Evita
Johnson sits in a booth at the Sunset Tower hotel, her image at ease in an orange printed Rodebjer dress, as we discuss her suburban childhood. Tower Bar is a safe haven for celebrities, especially for Johnson, who celebrated his 16th birthday here. “It was me and a bunch of girls in the penthouse,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I drank a bottle of Hypnotiq.” Hyp-what? “No one should know what it is. It’s a liqueur. It’s bright blue.” After getting drunk, she and her girlfriends ran across the street to the infamous Saddle Ranch, where tourists ride a mechanical bull. Does Johnson rotate? “No,” she said, “I didn’t ride the bull… Not that night.”
Johnson always seems to know what she’s doing and she has a perfect radar for entertaining. When she told her father that she wanted to drop out of college to become an actress, he cut her off because he wanted to make sure she really put in the work. And she’s appeared in more than 20 films over the past decade, from big-budget comedies to poignant dramas and even an artful remake of a classic horror film. Suspiria . For the record, Johnson calls the action “ancestral,” not “genetic,” and this distinction makes sense. In comedies like Working Girl, her mother is an outspoken woman with a husky voice and unconventional sexuality. Meanwhile, Johnson is a direct inspiration—all those unpredictable choices, brandishing her body like a weapon in films like Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash, where her points to a motel that threatens to overthrow the status quo. Not only on screen but we can’t take our eyes off her. There she was sitting front row at Gucci, supporting her friend, designer Alessandro Michele, or in the tabloids, buying and renovating Ryan Murphy’s former home in the Hollywood Hills, turning it into a perfect Midcentury Modern retreat decorated with works by David Hockney and Alice Mann.
