Dakota Johnson Is in Control

Dakota Johnson is a lot like that proverbial duck. She appears serene, but just beneath the surface she is paddling furiously—all day and all night. "I feel the most insane anxiety about our world and our planet," she says in between bites of takeout salad. It's 2 p.m. on a Wednesday in late February, and we're sitting in the quaint two-bedroom bungalow just south of Hollywood that she uses as an office for TeaTime Pictures, the film and TV development company she and former Netflix exec Ro Donnelly launched last fall.

The whole vibe of the place is effortless Hollywood. A sunny front room is bare except for two framed posters from Johnson's Luca Guadagnino films, the 2016 drama A Bigger Splash and the 2018 thriller Suspiria. In the bathroom hangs a surreal shot of Johnson's mom, the actress Melanie Griffith, and her ex Antonio Banderas gliding through a throng of photographers with a police escort. We had been talking about whether or not to get froyo, but we've moved on to—what else?—the global COVID-19 virus scare. "I'm constantly thinking about the state of the world right now. It keeps me up at night, all night, every night," she says. "My brain goes to crazy dark places with it." She takes another bite of spinach and chews slowly.

Young women delivering statements of grave concern without any overt alarm has become something of a trope. A laissez-faire delivery is practically the calling card of "chill girls" everywhere. But 30-year-old Johnson isn't chill—not that unbothered version of the word anyway. "My brain moves at a million miles per minute," she says. "I have to do a lot of work to purge thoughts and emotions, and I am in a lot of therapy."

READ MORE