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DAKOTA JOHNSON For you I will always be the mystery girl from the Fifty Shades saga, she has become an icon of transgression but now, she reveals to Grazia, that she has a new role as a muse for the Italian designer of the year and the movie director who wants to re-write the horror history. Almost laid down on the sofa of the suite where we decided to meet, Dakota Johnson looks like she would like to be anywhere but in the presence of a journalist. We are in New York; her shoes are on the floor, her feet tucked underneath her body and in front of her there is water and coffee. Just so you know, when I ask her about what she associates with happiness, she says coffee.
Before this interview, I had already met Dakota at Gucci’s event MoMa PS1 for the launch of Gucci in Bloom, the new female fragrance by Gucci created by Alessandro Michele, that features muses like Canadian photographer Petra Collins, American actress Hari Nef and Dakota Johnson. It’s not just coincidence: Dakota and Alessandro are close friends, Dakota wears a lot of Gucci on official events, so much that on the list one, the duo was together on the Red Carpet. This is also another reason why I ask her what her relationship with Alessandro is based on – also hoping my Italian roots will make me look better in front of her. “We care for each other.” She says, smiling. “Alessandro and I share the same values, we love the same things and both appreciate honesty and sincerity in people.” Friendship aside, it’s clear the relationship between Alessandro and Dakota is also based on their common aesthetic sensibility, love for vintage and that they look like they come from another time in history. “It feels like Alessandro is from a whole other time, he’s a genius.” She admits. “I’ve always loved anything that had a vintage vibe. I’ve been collecting various pieces from when I was still a kid,” she talks about her look. “Now I’m very lucky because I can wear magnificent clothes. I love to wear pieces that make me feel sexy; you will never see me on a Red Carpet in one of those dresses you see nowadays in which celebrities are practically half-naked. I care about what a dress is made of, not just how it’s cut. I think clothes are fundamental while building a character. A few times, I brought my own clothes on set to feel more at ease in the role and same goes for the hair. Sometimes I’m blonde but I am now a brunette. I might change color again someday, who knows.” If it’s all part of a plan, it’s understandable.
When the first Fifty Shades of Grey had its debut in 2015, Dakota was 25 and rather unknown to the public. The most attentive had spot her already in The Social Network as Justin Timberlake’s character Sean Parker, one night stand – part which for she has received very good critics. Although, it’s all thanks to the virgin initiated to SM by Christian, that the face, and most importantly the body of Dakota, becomes public knowledge. It’s also the moment in which the public starts realizing that she is the daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, which means that the girl has to answer for the first year of her professional life, to questions on how to pretend to have extreme sex on set and what her parents think of it.
What she talks about instead, is her relation with nature; “I grew up in Colorado. When I was a kid, I used to spend my time out in the open, surrounded by horses. Now I have a dog, but I still feel very close to nature.” Her grandmother, Tippi Hedren, is a famous actress, well known for her role in The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock who has been put aside after she refused the director’s special interest in her, so she started to take care of animals, saving the wildest ones. Dakota’s mom Melanie grew up with a lion in the house. “My grandma is the most glamorous woman I’ve ever met,” Dakota says. “She is so gorgeous and smart, a real classy woman." – Yet no mention of her mother. Back in 2015 when Melanie and Dakota attended the Oscars, Melanie said that she has no intention of watching the movie and Dakota seemed real upset about it. It all started up drama regarding the two not getting along. That was Dakota’s first taste at press and how intrusive it can be. "There are moments in which I feel very vulnerable, where the lack of privacy that my works involves feels unbearable, a real invasion. There are moments in which I realize it’s all part of the game, it happens, I gotta deal with it. I am in the middle, I know how fame works.” Growing up with two famous actors has parents has helped, just not so much. “I’ve felt this invasion of privacy twice in my life; first with my parents and now with me, but when I was a kid and my parents were at the top of their careers, phones weren’t used to take pictures and there was no social media."
Three years from the very first one came out, the last one, Fifty Shades Freed will hit theaters this Valentine’s Day (2018), in which we will see Anastasia in a white wedding dress (the innocence will last very little, though) but Dakota seems to be wanting to talk about something else. Because, in the meantime she has been working on much more and she did it amazingly. In 2015, she was Johnny Depp’s wife in Black Mass, but mostly she has been the young female lead of A Bigger Splash, a remake of the French La Piscine, directed by Italian Luca Guadagnino – movie who has been praised by the United States, just as her character. "I love Luca, I wanna marry him in fact. I know he is in love with Tilda Swinton, but I love her, too. I know it could be a bit messy but well, I love Luca." I remind her that she claimed to love two Italian men at this point. "It’s true. Maybe it’s because I have an European mentality or I was Italian in a past life, but yeah, I love both of them and I have a similar friendship with the both of them."
With Guadagnino, Dakota has just wrapped the remake of Suspiria, to be out in 2018, one of the horror masterpieces by Dario Argento, portrayed in a ballet class. "We shot in Varese, and it was an incredible experience. Very tiring and intense, but also exciting. Now that I think about it, I don’t even know how I did it. I play a ballerina, Susan Bannion, Suzy for her friends. Before we started shooting, I had to train and study ballet and on set I was always with a choreographer. Working on the dancing part was a work on its own, completely different yet complementary to the acting one. My body felt it, though. I lost a lot of weight, I was tired and sore, but there I knew the suffering and dignity dancers possess."
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