Credit: Far Out / Universal Pictures
Sun 18 October 2026 2:30, UK
Dakota Johnson’s career is an interesting case study in nepotism and public persona, because while she has made some fascinating acting choices, the various terrible ones haven’t stopped her from being one of the internet’s most beloved actors at the moment.
As the daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, the granddaughter of Alfred Hitchcock star Tippi Hedren, and the stepdaughter of Antonio Banderas, Johnson has always been surrounded by Hollywood royalty. It was only a matter of time, then, before she’d become a star herself, and after a brief appearance in one of her mother’s films, Crazy in Alabama, in 1999, she finally made her proper debut in 2010’s The Social Network.
A string of rather forgettable films followed before her life changed forever. She landed the leading role in Fifty Shades of Grey, the erotic movie on everyone’s lips in 2015, adapted from the popular novel by EL James. It was never going to be a hit with critics, though, judging by the atrociously written source material alone (which had actually begun as Twilight fan fiction, believe it or not).
Audiences lapped it up, with its rather accessible view of BDSM that subsequently inspired a bunch of middle-aged couples to experiment in the bedroom.
The cultural impact of Fifty Shades can’t be downplayed; the movie was everywhere upon its release, as were songs from the soundtrack, like Ellie Goulding’s ‘Love Me Like You Do’. It became an artefact of the mid-2010s rather than an example of enduring cinema, making such a large sum of money despite its critical dressing-down that it spawned two sequels.
Johnson was criticised for her rather stiff and boring performance as Anastasia Steele, winning two Golden Raspberry Awards for ‘Worst Actress’ and ‘Worst Screen Combo’. Between the Fifty Shades movies, she appeared in some great films, like Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash and Suspiria and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter, but before you could say “Oh, maybe I was wrong about her”, she was back in some cinematic atrocities, like the bizarre Netflix version of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, Materialists, and, of course, Madame Web.
The latter earned her another Razzie, with many viewers dubbing it one of the worst movies they’d ever seen. Rightly so. Madame Web was a genuinely awful excuse for cinema. You’d think that Johnson would’ve learned to pick her roles more wisely, considering that she had found such acclaim after working with the well-respected Guadagnino, but Johnson has recently appeared in an adaptation of Verity by Colleen Hoover – an author whose work is just as bad as James’s, not least because of their repeatedly problematic depictions of abuse.
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
You might assume, then, that Johnson finds the negative reception to so many of her films the worst part of being an actor, but rather, it’s the experience of wrapping a shoot, no matter the outcome of the movie, that she finds the most crushing part.
“I’ve felt that sort of heartbreak I don’t even know how many times now in my life,” she told Vogue.
Maybe that’s why she has made so many stinkers – the experience of working with others and forging close relationships has perhaps clouded her vision when it comes to assessing whether the movie she is a part of is actually good.
“It’s like leaving summer camp,” she said, concluding, “It’s so devastating. And I don’t know how much more heartbreak my heart can handle.”
