The movie that inspired Dakota Johnson to become an actor
In 2015, everyone was talking about Fifty Shades of Grey, an erotic drama that achieved instant box-office success. Still, that didn’t stop it from being critically panned. Regardless, the movie provided lead actor Dakota Johnson with her Hollywood breakthrough.
The daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, the actor’s ascent to stardom was inevitable. However, as the star of one of the year’s most controversial movies, she found even more fame than she had perhaps anticipated. Since then, she has starred in popular movies such as Suspiria, The Lost Daughter and The Peanut Butter Falcon, as well as the other instalments in the Fifty Shades series.
Additionally, she has produced several movies under her TeaTime Pictures banner, demonstrating that she is interested in more than just acting. Johnson clearly loves movies, and there is one that inspired her to make acting her profession in the first place.
The answer isn’t one of her parent’s movies, such as Crazy in Alabama, in which Johnson was given her first minor role alongside her mother, directed by her then-stepfather, Antonio Banderas. Rather, Johnson became enamoured with Roger Michell’s 1999 romantic-comedy Notting Hill.
When it comes to rom-coms, Notting Hill, which was penned by Richard Curtis, remains one of the best the genre has to offer. It is charming and hopelessly romantic, with just enough cheesiness to shamelessly revel in without wanting to be sick. The movie stars Julia Roberts as a movie star, Anna Scott, who meets the bumbling British bookseller William Thacker, played by Hugh Grant, in his Notting Hill shop. The pair embark on a romance that brings their vastly different lives together, not without plenty of drama and scandal along the way.
According to Johnson, Notting Hill influenced her decision to become a star, hoping to appear in a movie just like it. She told Marie Claire, “There are not movies made like that anymore. Movies where they take their time and the pacing is more languid and it’s about light-hearted escapism and wishful thinking.”
She added, “When I was growing up, I loved those movies so much. They were the reason why I was like, ‘Well, maybe I could be an actress. Maybe I could be a movie star.’”
The actor also praised the film’s innate feel-good factor, something that has drawn her to work on certain projects in her own career. She explained, “There’s something really nice about making something that makes people just feel good and get out of their lives for a second and maybe think, ‘Oh, my dreams could be not dreams…”
Revisit Notting Hill below.
