10 facts about the actress playing Anastasia Steele

After months of internet-based speculation, the lead actors for Sam Taylor-Wood’s big screen interpretation of Fifty Shades of Grey were announced yesterday.

So, it’s a big no no to previous favourites/vague rumours about Emma Watson (we couldn’t see her in this role, in all honesty), Cara Delevigne (guessing she’s busy being the world’s most sought after model) and Alexis Bledel (thank god — way to ruin Gilmore Girls forever).

Instead, the role of Anastasia has been snapped up by 23-year-old US actress and model Dakota Johnson, whose best known role to date is probably the Fox sitcom Ben and Kate, which ran for one season up until January this year.

So what do we actually know about the actress playing Anastasia Steele?

Our guess is, at present, is very little.

Here are a few facts.

1. Dakota Johnson comes from established acting stock: her parents are actors Don Johnson (Miami Vice) and Melanie Griffith, making her grandmother the actress Tippi Hedren (star of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds) and her stepfather Antonio Banderas.

2. Her acting debut came in 1999, in a Banderas-directed film called Crazy in Alabama, which somehow managed to turn the issue of racially motivated murder in the Civil Rights era South into a comedy drama. No, we don’t get it either… 30% Rotten Tomatoes approval and a Razzie nomination for Griffith.

3. She had a small role in The Social Network, playing the girl who has a one night stand with Justin Timberlake, and also appeared in 21 Jump Street and The Five Year Engagement.

4. Conversely she’s also set to add some Shakespeare thesp-ing to her CV next year, taking the lead role of Imogen in Cymbeline.

5. She used to be friends with Rumer Willis, according to her IMDB profile. But not anymore. We don’t know why.

6. She has been a model since 2006, fronting a campaign for Mango Jeans and gracing various low profile magazine covers.

7. In the same year she was named ‘Miss Golden Globe’ (an honour also bestowed upon her mother in 1975). The role, which has existed since 1963 alongside the equivalent ‘Mr Golden Globe’, requires the chosen child of a celeb couple to assist in preparations for the awards ceremony.

8. Also according to IMDB, she spent time in a teen rehab centre for drug and alcohol addiction in Malibu at the premature age of 16.

9. In Nylon Magazine’s Young Hollywood issue, published in May 2010, she was named as one of 55 ‘faces of the future.’

10. She has a long term boyfriend and, in the manner of Anastasia Steele, has ‘never really dated.’

Watch this space for a similar mini-bio on Charlie Hunnam, the future Christian Grey.

Fifty Shades of Grey is set for release in August 2014.

Image: zennie62 on Flickr

Originally published in 2013 at https://www.thenationalstudent.com.