“No, you’re not. Fuck off”: the only good musician-turned-actor, according to Dakota Johnson
There has long been a link between successful actors wanting to be musicians and vice versa, and where some of these ventures are to be encouraged, like Lady Gaga or Joe Keery, others, less so, such as Corey Feldman or Jared Leto.
All the way back to Frank Sinatra, it seems being great at one medium just isn’t enough for some people, but Dakota Johnson isn’t having it, and you’re not likely to see her release an album any time soon.
You’d be well within your rights to think that stance might well be because Johnson had Chris Martin from Coldplay as a boyfriend on and off for about eight years and so was capable of having an acoustic concert from a world famous music superstar whenever she felt like it, and probably even more so given she basically traded him in for a younger model in the shape of…er…Role Model AKA Tucker Pillsbury.
But no, it is in fact a belief that the Madame Web star holds dear that actors should be actors, and remain that way, without venturing into the murky world of a recording studio or going on tour in the vein of Keanu Reeves with his band Dogstar.
She told Bustle, “I don’t know if this is a bullshit belief, but I’m like, I am an actress, I’m a filmmaker, and I will stay in my lane. I will never release an album. I will never have an art show. If there’s a musician who is like, ‘I’m also an actor’, I’m like, ‘No, you’re not. Fuck off’.”
And in fairness to Johnson, there are several examples over the years that prove she has something of a point: there was Britney Spears in Crossroads, Mick Jagger in the 1992 sci-fi Freejack (shudder), Geri Halliwell’s eye-gouging cameo in Sex and the City, the list goes on. But there is one musician who gets away with it where Johnson is concerned, and has carte blanche from her to be on the big screen whenever he likes.
Johnson admitted, “The only musician who is also an actor that I’m like, OK, is Tom Waits. I’m like, ‘Fine, you get to do both’. I’m so judgmental about actors, but if there’s a musician who’s like, ‘I’m having an art show’, that feels OK to me.”
You can’t really argue with her on the Waits thing. After all, the gravel-voiced American singer-songwriter has appeared in some superb movies working under some of the best directors in Hollywood history, including 1993’s Short Cuts with Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1992, plus a Coen brothers film and a Paul Thomas Anderson effort too, thanks to 2021’s Licorice Pizza. That’s quite a movie CV for a musician.
Waits is still going too; he’ll be providing one of the voices for this year’s sci-fi animation Ray Gunn, which is directed by Pixar legend Brad Bird and costars Sam Rockwell and Scarlett Johansson. A Netflix-backed project with a huge budget in the region of $150million, it will hit the streaming site later this year, but meanwhile, Johnson has the Anne Hathaway-starring drama Verity coming out in 2026, in addition to developing the somewhat concerningly titled Three Incestuous Sisters with Saoirse Ronan and ‘Best Actress’ Oscar winner Jessie Buckley.
