The greatest actor ever, according to Dakota Johnson
Regardless of whether or not she should be considered a nepo baby, Dakota Johnson has found some excellent sources of acting inspiration.
Nepo baby has been used as a blanket term to encompass all actors who come from famous families, but that description might be more far-reaching than those who use it expect, for if anyone with a prominent parent in the industry was to be counted, people like Jeff Bridges, Jamie Lee Curtis, Laura Dern, Ben Stiller, and Sofia Coppola would all be considered nepo babies.
However, when it comes to the modern use of the phrase, it tends to be referenced in regard to those who were able to get opportunities because of their last name, and not because of their talent.
Dakota Johnson has been in the crossfire of many of these debates due to her divisiveness as an actress, who’s had the unfortunate luck of being in some terrible films. While she isn’t the sole reason that Fifty Shades of Grey or Madame Web were so disastrous, it’s not like she emerged from them with her dignity intact, and oddly, the worst of her films seem to perform the best, wherein some of her best work in the Luca Guadagnino films Suspiria and A Bigger Splash, were largely overlooked for being smaller, art house releases.
Johnson has also stumbled into a few nightmarish public relations situations, including her recent praise for the Saudi Arabian Film Festival and last year’s Materialists, which was quite divisive, as some viewers expected to see a romantic comedy and were surprised that the film took a dark turn to deal with issues like abuse, loneliness, and depression. Nonetheless, she has been in the acting world for a while and has proclaimed her affinity for classic cinema, naming Gena Rowlands as her “all-time love”.
When it comes to important performers that transcended the medium, Rowlands was an unparalleled talent, best known for her performances in the films directed by her husband, John Cassavetes, including A Woman Under the Influence and Opening Night, which broke ground with how emotionally gruelling they were.
Rowlands is one of the few performers who could be described as fearless, as she approached every role with an attempt at emulating realism. She also had a long career in Hollywood that spanned beyond her husband’s work, and included other classics like the Woody Allen comedy Another Woman, Jim Jarmusch’s anthology Night on Earth, and a cameo in her son Nick Cassavetes’ film The Notebook.
She is considered to have had an aspirational career because she rarely appeared in films that she wasn’t passionate about, which may have been because of what era she worked in. Rowlands is an icon of the New Hollywood generation, in which the industry gave more opportunities to young, passionate filmmakers interested in making experimental and ambitious projects. The same opportunities don’t exist for actors of Johnson’s generation, and with a growing importance placed upon superhero and streaming films, it can be harder for her to find projects that feel like her version of A Woman Under the Influence.
To Johnson’s credit, she has made an effort to appear in more old-fashioned, character-based films recently, including the two-hander Daddio and the uproarious sex farce Splitsville, and sure, whether she has the potential to truly be the next Rowlands remains to be seen, but she at least has her ambitions in the right place.
