Action-Comedy Films To Horror, Here's What You Need To Know About Dakota Johnson

American actor, producer and model Dakota Johnson best known for her role as Anastasia Steele in Fifty Shades, was featured in Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Hollywood and Entertainment.

Making her first film debut at the age of 10 in the 1999 American dark-comedy film, Crazy In Alabama, she was also cast in The Social Network (2010). In 2012, she had her breakthrough in the action comedy film, 21 Jump Street. She also starred in  Luca Guadagnino’s supernatural horror film, Suspiria in 2018. Johnson, 32, is Hollywood’s next-generation, with four upcoming films she shot during the COVID-19 lockdown. From The Lost Daughter to Cooper Raiff’s Cha Cha Real Smooth, she appears more and more talented in every film. Johnson has now been made part of Sony pictures to play the role of Madame Web.

Dakota Johnson Best Movies

The Lost Daughter

It’s been a busy year for Oscar winner Maggie Gyllenhaal, who just wrapped work on HBO’s The Deuce and Aardvark, the latter which she wrote with her sister. But what we have is Venice International Film Festival breakout The Lost Daughter. Directed by Gyllenhaal and based on Elena Ferrante’s 2006 best-seller, Johnson gives a haunting performance as a young woman drowning in ambivalence about her role as a mother. But she wasn’t the obvious choice for Gyllenhaal: “I think that some of my choices are risky and people aren’t aware that I would go to those places but this was too good not to do,” says the star in Hollywood Reporter's latest Directors Roundtable.

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Cha Cha Real Smooth

After building a busy acting career, including roles on Mad Men and The Mindy Project, Lennon decided to turn her focus back on to producing. Determined to build a slate of films centered around female-driven stories, she headed up the production company TeaTime Pictures. With projects ranging from indie films like Cha Cha Real Smooth by Cooper Raiff, starring Johnson and films from up-and-coming stars like Tig Notaro, TeaTime Pictures is quickly making waves in the film industry with its unique approach to making movies.

Cult Following

The heart and the talent behind Rock Steady Productions, Riley Keough and Cassie Donnelly are two of Hollywood's most exciting actors working today. Together, they have developed projects around town, including TV series Cult Following (Johnson stars alongside Riley Keough, her best friend since age 15). Riley Keough and Dakota Johnson have a lot in common. The actors, who are close friends, are reportedly set to star in the upcoming film Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know together. Both have starred in successful films like "The Runaways" and "Black Mass," respectively, with their famous family members as well.

A Bigger Splash

Johnson’s choice to work with independent directors like David Fincher and Luca Guadagnino suggests that she prefers quality over stardom. After all, in 2009, Fincher made Johnson the face of his femme fatale-style thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. She followed that up with a sexy role in the box-office hit Fifty Shades of Grey. Call Me by Your Name is the story of a love affair that blossoms over one summer in Italy between a 17-year-old American student, spending his days idling in an ancient villa and smoking weed, and a 24-year-old academic completing the last months of his post-doc. The director Luca Guadagnino had been searching for an actress to play the film’s sultry 17-year-old pretending to be a 22-year-old, Penelope. An agent friend slipped him an early secret promo reel of Fifty Shades, and Guadagnino stopped in his tracks.

The Peanut Butter Falcon

The Fifty Shades trilogy may have turned Jamie Dornan, its Christian Grey, into a fan favorite among women, but for Dakota Johnson, who played Anastasia Steele, stardom has been a slow burn. The actor earned critical acclaim for her performance in 2014’s Black Mass opposite Johnny Depp – “I loved it. It was the most challenging role I’ve ever done in my life,” she says – and took smaller roles in movies like 2016’s How to Be Single and 2018’s Tag while it took time to find her again on-screen. Now starring opposite Shia LaBeouf in indie hit The Peanut Butter Falcon (in theaters Aug. 9), Johnson doesn’t plan to stay out of sight for long. Johnson’s practice of mental focus has helped her navigate a ferocious industry, where most young stars appear bite-size. After all, she was the highest paid actor on TV in 2015 with his HBO show Ballers, which earned $1.3 million per episode. The plethora of big budget blockbusters she stars in also pays well. But money isn’t everything to Johnson. She loves cinema so much, it hurts sometimes.

Suspiria

Suspiria is a psychological horror masterpiece. The story of an American woman joining a prestigious ballet school in Germany, it features one of the most memorably disturbing sequences in horror movie history: a full- length dance performance featuring outlandish costume changes and nightmarish set design, shot entirely in single takes. The climax features one of the most shocking villains ever to stalk a horror film’s heroine through abandoned parking garages and dingy basements. Beautiful and sinister, this moody “giallo” by horror master Dario Argento has been reshaped into a slick dance thriller by director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name). There's an air of mystery that hangs over Suspiria, which makes you want to watch it again and again just to try and figure out what actually happened. The redial button on your remote becomes quite useful.

Views expressed are the author's own.