Growing up with famous parents, Melanie Griffith, Don Johnson and stepfather Antonio Banderas, left an indelible mark on Dakota Johnson — sometimes for the better and sometimes not.
“I don’t think I ever truly realized what Hollywood was, but I grew up on set and was always surrounded by people who made movies,” Johnson told Vogue Germany for its November cover story. “I mean, I was born in Texas because my father filmed there.”
The “Fifty Shades of Grey” actress said she always knew her family’s profession was different from her classmates whose moms and dads went to an office each day.
“That was a challenge because it’s hard to make and keep friends when you’re on the road so much as a kid,” she said. “But I always just accepted it: This is what we do. It’s in our blood.”
Because of that influence, Johnson said she wanted to be an actress since she was a kid and “be a part of what the people around me were doing.”
“As a child, I was obsessed with movies,” she told Vogue. “I was the kid who watched the same thing over and over again for a year. I think that shapes your imagination and what you think is possible for yourself, especially when you watch movies with other children, like ‘Mary Poppins’ or ‘Home Alone.’”
Johnson’s parents, however, didn’t allow her to act as a child until she graduated from high school, with the exception of a small role with her mother in the 1999 film “Crazy in Alabama.”
Despite all the positive exposure to a creative industry, having famous parents could be unsettling as a child.
“When I was little, there were times when it was really quite scary, and people would aggressively and physically try to get to my mom when we were just going to the supermarket or something,” she said, adding, “If you accept that as normal as a little kid, it can lead to a lot of complexes.”
She continued, “And then, of course, the fact that you’re in the public eye and the world knows about your private life in a way that’s very invasive, rude, and painful. So, yes, there are downsides, but there are also incredible upsides—like with everything, I think.”
Griffith, who is best known for 1988’s “Working Girl,” married Don Johnson, of “Miami Vice” fame in 1976, which lasted six months. They married a second time in 1989, shortly before Dakota was born, and divorced in 1996.
Griffith married Banderas in 1996, and they divorced in 2015.
Dakota Johnson has never been married. She was in a long-term relationship with “Coldplay” frontman Chris Martin until this year.
