Dakota Johnson Only Had a Few Hours to Prepare for ‘Ben and Kate’
Many actors start with minor TV roles and work their way into film. But that wasn’t the case for Dakota Johnson. Best known for portraying Anastasia Steele in the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise, she jumped right into film from the beginning of her career. In fact, Johnson’s only had one notable TV role — in Ben and Kate. And she had very little time to prep for the part.
Dakota Johnson’s acting career began in 1999
Born in 1989 in Austin, Texas, Johnson started acting when she was just a child. As IMDb reports, her debut role was as the on-screen daughter to her real-life mother, Melanie Griffith, in the film Crazy in Alabama. A decade later, Johnson returned to the big screen as a young adult in 2010’s The Social Network.
After that, her film career was dotted with small parts in films like Beastly (2011), 21 Jump Street (2012), and Cymbeline (2014). In 2015, she stepped into the role that would go on to define her entire career. Playing Anastasia Steele alongside Jamie Dornan’s Christian Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey made Johnson a bona fide star. The film adaptation of the steamy novel of the same name provided Johnson with a platform to show off her acting chops across multiple sequels.
Johnson has continued with a career on the big screen but with much more prominent roles in the years since. She had a leading role in 2018’s Bad Times at the El Royale alongside Jeff Bridges and Cynthia Erivo. In 2019, Johnson starred with Shia LeBeouf in The Peanut Butter Falcon. In 2021, she took on a starring part in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s critically acclaimed film The Lost Daughter.
Dakota Johnson starred in the sitcom ‘Ben and Kate’
With nearly 40 credits in Johnson’s current filmography, it’s a bit shocking to see only one significant TV role. Most actors have a mix of small and big screen roles, especially as they work to establish themselves in the entertainment industry. For Johnson, film has almost entirely dominated her body of work.
The exception was a titular role in the short-lived sitcom Ben and Kate. In a career retrospective video for Vanity Fair, Johnson reflected on the role, which came about in a unique way. “They had cast somebody else,” Johnson remembered. When the intended lead “fell out at the last minute,” Johnson got a call from her agent and asked if she could be at Fox in 45 minutes. “It was so crazy,” Johnson said as she described meeting everyone just an hour before the show started filming. After “running lines like crazy,” Johnson returned to the creative team and “got the part.”
She said she “had the best time” playing the young mother protagonist of the series. But Ben and Kate ran for only a single 16-episode season, so Johnson was soon back to other work.
What’s next for Dakota Johnson?
Fans are eager to see Johnson take on the leading role in the Netflix adaptation of Jane Austen’s famous novel Persuasion. She plays Anne Elliot, who shocks her family by refusing to conform to the norms of the time. The movie premiered on July 15, 2022, on the streaming service.
In a much different role, Johnson stars as Madame Web in a Spider-Man flick of the same name. The film is expected sometime in 2023 and will feature a female-dominated cast, including Sydney Sweeney and Isabela Merced.
Finally, Johnson will appear alongside Sean Penn in the upcoming Daddio. Little is known about this project (which is in the pre-production phase), but it is written and directed by Christy Hall and will be a drama about a conversation between a woman and her cab driver.
