Dakota Johnson Senses the Pressures of Fame: "I Still Feel Like I Don't Know What I'm Doing"

The Fifty Shades of Grey actress admits she doesn't feel certain about her future in Hollywood

By Samantha Schnurr Apr 26, 2016 1:00 PMTags
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She's one of the most well-known breakout stars in recent years, but even Dakota Johnson is uncertain about her future in Hollywood. 

As the unforgettable protagonist of the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise, the 26-year-old daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith swept the industry's attention on her own in just the last year.

With two more blockbuster sequels slated for the years ahead and a People's Choice Award under her belt, Johnson is on route to the kind of megastardom akin to Kristen Stewart in Twilight or Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games. However, she doesn't quite see it that way.  

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"I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing," she said in the May issue of Interview. "Like, I'm unsure of what my life will be like. I mean, I have such an obsession with making movies that I probably will always do that. But sometimes my life can feel so suffocating, and then it can feel so massive, like I don't have a handle on it at all, and I don't know where it's going or what I'm going to do.

"Right now, I'm known for making movies. And I wonder if that's it. I don't know. It doesn't feel like it to me."

Perhaps her uncertainty is rooted in audiences' increasingly shorter attention spans. 

"It seems like the world is so fast to move its interest to someone else. When I think about filmmakers and actresses that I have admired my whole life, I've admired their entire body of work. I have admired what they began with and what they're doing now. And now I feel like there's such a weird pressure to find the new face," she continued.

"I don't get it at all. I want to see women evolve. I want to see a body of work. I want to see all of it."

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In fact, she's so focused on bettering her craft, Johnson has managed to miss out on the country's favorite pastime: Netflix.

"I missed the television train at some point. I don't know what happened, but now I've created a complex about it," she admitted.

"I'm missing out on what everybody's watching, and now I can't even begin to think about starting to watch a television show because it's been so long. I don't even have a Netflix account."

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