Celebrity kid Dakota Johnson comes into its own

NANCY MILLS

NYT SYNDICATE

ITHINK I learned more of the people who I work with than from my parents, "says Dakota Johnson.

Most young actors in Hollywood would probably say the same thing.

However, would their parents not Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson.

The only child from that marriage, the 23-year-old Johnson grew up on film and television sets.

"I would look at my parents work," she recalls, "but I was not sitting there they study. I was out playing with a production assistant. " Something must have taken. After a series of small parts in the social network (2010), beastly (2011), the involvement of the five years (2012) and 21 Jump Street (2012), Johnson landed a starring role in the new Fox sitcom Ben and Kate.

She plays Kate, a single mother who works in a bar and considers himself super-organised.

When her older brother, Ben (Nat Faxon), back in her life crashes and decides to stick around and help, creates a new ' odd couple ' family. Johnson compares Am and Kate to The Cosby Show (1984-1992).

"It has that family atmosphere," she says, speaking by phone from her Los Angeles home. "Real things going on.

There is a lot of love, but it is also intense, funny and stupid.

The young actress remains "Cosby said enough funny things,", "but there were also times when he talked with his daughter about boys. You don't see that anymore. " Johnson didn't expect starring in a television series so early in her career, she says, but was won by "the crazy energy of the script."Kate is like how many women feel on the inside, "says Johnson. "She's just trying to keep it all together and still be a good person and a good mother. It is difficult. Kate's funny and silly. She makes mistakes that painful that she has to clean up.

S h e also has this brother who she has to clean up after. " Series Creator Dana Fox, based on the show of her relationship with her own brother.

The network struggled to find the right actress for the role, decide on the relatively untested Johnson only days before the filming of the pilot.

"They put a lot of blind faith in me," says the actress. "Kate and I are totally different. She is older than me and has a 5-year-old daughter. I'm not close to a mother. " To her mother's side, says Johnson, she turned with child actress Maggie Elizabeth Jones, who plays the daughter of her on the camera.

"I've spent a lot of time in conversation with Maggie and her questions," says Johnson.

"It is important that that relationship and bond credible to viewers." It was not that much of a stretch because Johnson four younger siblings-16-year-old Stella Banderas, 12-year-old Atherton Grace Johnson, 10-year-old Jasper Breckinridge Johnson and 6-year-old has Deacon Johnson. She also has two older half brothers, 30-year-old Jesse Johnson and 27-year-old Alexander Bauer. Her stepfather is Antonio Banderas and her grandmother is actress Tippi Hedren, best known for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964).

"My eldest brother and I have a relationship similar to Ben and Kate 's," says Johnson. "He is not so ridiculous, and he doesn't get in this crazy things like Ben does." After recording seven episodes, Johnson discovered that they had at least one similarity with Kate.

"I'm terrible at planning," she says, "but I am responsible. I know how to do things, although I much delay. " Despite growing up in show business, Johnson says, she had no idea of the requirements of a sitcom.

"The hours are insane," she says. "It is physically taxing, because I am on my feet 14 to 16 hours per day. I have to remember that I have a life and a family and that I need to call my mother back. " Johnson grew up mainly with Griffith in Aspen, Colorado, and Los Angeles.

"A pretty normal life," she says. "It was an average-ish House, apart from the fact that my parents were famous and we travelled a lot." Not so on average was Miss Golden Globe at the 2006 Awards ceremony, an honor that was donated for the celebrity offspring is called.

Nor was it normal to her film debut at age 10, when she briefly in Crazy in Alabama (1999) appeared, a comedy, directed by her stepfather, Antonio Banderas, and actors of her mother.

She is generally reluctant to talk about her parents.

"It's weird to me why people always so interested in what it was like growing up," says Johnson. "For me, it was my family.

She would be angry at me, disappointed with me and welcome me. They would cheer me on and they would give me, ground like normal parents do. I feel at some point that I was hit for three years in a row. " When she was 19 that Johnson to leave home to live on her own.

' I don't want to go to school because I didn't like school, "she says. "I was really bored and did not understand the point of test-taking and homework. It was a waste of my time.

"Acting was my plan from the get-go," Johnson continues. "My parents wanted me to go to school, and I said that I would go if I could act to be examined. Juilliard was the only school I applied to.

"While I was waiting in line to audition, I was talking with the student guard the door, the threshold of the judgment" reminds them. "I asked him, ' what is a typical day like? Go you play, watch movies, studying people see? ' He said: ' We get here at 9 am. We are in a classroom and we read these books, and we're not going home until 11 at night. "' Johnson was shocked.

"You're with the same people for four years, and you are discovering yourself," she says. "It is an amazing process, but it is not the way that I think. I have a million people to meet, travel places, go to museums, go where my character gone.

' I did the audition, and I'm pretty sure it was the worst they've ever seen. ' Johnson returned to Los Angeles, found an agent and began auditioning for real.

Occasionally she would like her parents for advice.

"My father really know about the whole production side of this world," the young actress says, "especially when it comes to contracts and questions about things like time off." Griffith, whom her daughter describes as "fearless, one of the bravest and most stylish women that I know," emphasizes good behavior.

"They told me to always be polite and gracefully," says Johnson.

Her first big break came when Director David Fincher her as a Stanford University student who is a one-night stand with Justin Timberlake's character in The Social Network has cast. Her second came during an audition for the involvement of the five year, when Johnson discovered that they could do comedy.

"I improved with Jason Segel," she says.

"I never did that before and it worked pretty well." Before you begin, Ben and Kate Johnson, completed two independent films. Theo she plays a homeless girl who befriends an Eskimo, and she has a supporting role in the high school comedy Gay Dude, about two old friends whose friendship is tested when one comes out of the closet.

However, it is most likely to profiling Johnson's project Ben and Kate.

"Except for paparazzi, people don't really recognize me," she says. "I'm so happy, because I am incredibly uncomfortable in situations like that ... It's really a matter of how you present yourself to people. If you are interested in that, it will come to you. If you're not, it won't.