Dakota Johnson isn’t a bad actor, she just knows how to play the game

In this one life, we are called to make investments in ourselves to advance our livelihoods. For some, this might mean learning a new language or taking a coding class. For Dakota Johnson, investing in herself meant saying yes to the job that meant she’d be ridiculed for a decade over how she said the word “buttplugs.” 

Ever since her sexually inexperienced “Fifty Shades of Grey” character inquired about sex toys in a ridiculous scene from the franchise’s first movie, Johnson’s merits have been a staple of public debate. The daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, and the granddaughter of Tippi Hedren, Johnson is a nepo baby three times over, and the public does not like to see nepo babies succeed so easily. But is having to say the word “genital clamps” with complete and total earnestness not the very definition of paying your dues? “Fifty Shades” was not only Johnson’s first leading role, but her first movie in a major (and majorly derided) franchise, developed from a massively popular book series. And while her naivete might’ve been evident, that was also the point. Johnson’s character, Anastasia Steele, is wide-eyed and unassuming. But with a few smaller parts and a lifetime of Hollywood adjacency under her belt, Johnson herself was experienced enough to pull off Anastasia’s dolting ignorance. The films might not have been sold as acting showcases, but for Johnson, they were the indisputable making of a movie star. 

Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan in “Fifty Shades of Grey” (Universal Pictures)

Contrary to public opinion, a movie star does not have to be a good actor, and even the greatest actors aren’t born to be movie stars. Though there is plenty of space for crossover, a specific set of criteria separates the two. A decent actor needs both naturalism and performance skill. Their arsenal demands complete vulnerability and unassailable empathy, allowing them not just to inhabit someone entirely different from themselves, but live inside the character. A movie star, on the other hand, can get away with phoning it in, coasting on their charisma and magnetism as far as it’ll take them.

Throughout her career, Johnson has fallen into the middle of this Venn diagram (though many would argue she sits firmly in one circle or the other). For 10 years, people have debated whether Johnson has talent, wit, charisma and screen presence; whether she can lead a movie or whether she’s its kiss of death. It seems that with each new role, the conversation surrounding Johnson is recycled. But the dialogue has never been more apt than it is with her latest film, “Materialists,” which deals in the intangible qualities we place worth into — the same ones that implacable viewers have disputed when it comes to Johnson’s work. As Lucy, a New York matchmaker, Johnson’s character has turned the intangibles into her trade. It’s Lucy’s job to sift through a person’s attributes, both real and imagined, legitimately important and completely superfluous, to determine their compatibility with one of her clients. But when Lucy has trouble matching a client that doesn’t fit into any specific niche, the film twists into a metatextual commentary that echoes the way Johnson is treated as someone who is a good actor, but a better movie star. The legitimacy of her abilities has been constantly assessed and analyzed, and when one of her films is a failure, the blame typically rests on Johnson’s shoulders. But Johnson isn’t box office poison; she’s its saving grace, and in “Materialists,” Johnson combines movie-star flair and quiet skill for a performance dynamic enough to silence her cynics, so long as they approach it with an open mind.

Dakota Johnson and Chris Evans attend A24’s “Materialists” premiere at DGA Theater on June 07, 2025, in New York City. (Arturo Holmes/Getty Images)

That’s more easily said than done, given that, in just one weekend, “Materialists” has turned into one of the year’s most polarizing films. The movie delighted some critics but alienated others, along with audiences who were expecting the rom-com that the film was marketed as. Everything from writer-director Celine Song’s screenplay to Lucy’s canonical salary and a trenchcoat she wears during one sequence has become the fodder of critique. Some find the film’s dissection of the economics of dating to be incisive, while others think it’s outdated and cold. And at the center of it all, once again, is Johnson, whose presence is either dreadful or the film’s best feature, depending on who you ask. 

Perhaps it doesn’t help Johnson’s case that her previous role in a widely released theatrical film was 2024’s universally ridiculed “Madame Web,” in which Johnson plays the titular character, who transforms from an EMT into a superhero after a horrific accident. For whatever reason — and it certainly can’t be that anyone was expecting a late-stage superhero movie to be good — audiences were surprised that the film about a clairvoyant cousin of Spider-Man was awful. But if you can look past all of the ludicrous plotting and the atrocious dialogue, “Madame Web” is one of the most hysterical theatrical comedies to come about in years, led by a prosaic Johnson, sleepwalking her way to a big fat check. Throughout the film, she seems increasingly aware that there is no redeeming this steaming pile of superhero schlock and decides to lean into the absurdity. Johnson’s natural movie star charisma pushes the film past the limits of nonsense and into sheer camp, transcending its dead-on-arrival status to make the film into a burgeoning cult classic. Show me a person who would rather watch another superhero flop like the 2011 “Green Lantern” movie, and I’ll show you a liar and a misogynist!

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Jokes aside, the sheer, car-wreck watchability of “Madame Web” is a testament to Johnson’s allure. Her choices are strange and reserved, keenly offsetting bursts of personality when the scene or situation calls for it. In the “Materialists” press tour, Johnson is more freely magnetic, sitting for another “Vanity Fair” lie detector test and answering cheeky, rapid-fire questions with her co-star, Pedro Pascal, for “Vogue.” She’s quick-witted and intelligent, tossing out jokes with such an unassuming naturalism that you don’t realize she’s lobbed another punchline into the air until it lands on your head so close to the first. It’s not that Johnson can’t translate this charisma into her films, but rather that it looks different in a narrative setting. 

Every character Johnson plays is some extension of herself (and any actor who says otherwise about their own roles is lying), and in “Materialists,” she cleverly supplies a controlled, calculating performance that is as fitting for Lucy as it is natural for Johnson. Not a good actor? This is a woman who so convincingly lied about adoring limes in a video for “Architectural Digest” that no one knew she was telling a straight-faced fib until she revealed she’s allergic to limes over a year later. That winking version of Johnson doesn’t look so different from Lucy, who spends her days convincing her clients that she’s going to find them the love of their life, despite working with nothing but a little charm and a whole lot of hope.

Song recently told Variety that she knew Johnson was right for the role both because of “how funny Dakota is” and because “she has this shell to protect herself.” Lucy is the same way, moving through the world with an air of utter confidence to pull prospective clients, and keeping up that facade so they never see her sweat. If Lucy doesn’t seem certain of her abilities, they’ll take their time and money elsewhere, going back to dating the old-fashioned way by paying $19.99 a week for Hinge+. Lucy also knows that people talk, and that if she can’t find a particularly fastidious client like Sophie (Zoë Winters) a good match, her reputation could be on the line. Suddenly, “Materialists” becomes about what is and is not considered a “good” performance in your line of work when it comes to pleasing a picky audience, despite having proven yourself several times over. In both Hollywood and matchmaking, it seems, you’re only as good as your last effort, no matter how many examples of stellar work you have to show. 

Melanie Griffith, Dakota Johnson and Don Johnson (Krista Kennell/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images)For Lucy and Johnson alike, it’s not enough to be good, or even great. A nepo baby must prove themselves over and over again, much in the way that Johnson’s mother, Melanie Griffith, had to do in the 1980s, after most of Griffith’s early roles reduced her to a sex symbol. Given where Johnson broke through, asking to be taken seriously even as Anastasia Steele in the glorified supermarket erotic pulp that is “Fifty Shades” — which, admittedly, is an opportunity many young, nameless actors would kill for — it seems not much has changed in the decades since. And while being consistently wary of nepotism isn’t a bad thing, an unwillingness to impartially engage with an actor’s performance is. Even if the film didn’t present a fascinating thematic parallel to Johnson’s career, she’d still be perfectly suited for a movie like “Materialists,” which demands its lead to inhabit Lucy’s droll cynicism. That quality is harder than it looks to replicate with ease, but Johnson has been armed with it ever since her first “Fifty Shades” interviews, where she had to dance around the fact that men like Matt Lauer were asking her about simulating kinky sex onscreen. What was once perceived as awkwardness, we now know to be Johnson’s strong suit, delivering viral moment after viral moment, such as the now-infamous shoot-down, “That’s not the truth, Ellen,” that has come to be closely tied with the downfall of Ellen DeGeneres and her career. She doesn’t suffer anyone’s foolishness because she doesn’t have to, and that confidence is precisely what aligns her with the classic image of a movie star, the kind of actor that we can’t help but watch, even when their movie is falling off a cliff. If Johnson didn’t have star quality, her presence in a film wouldn’t launch a thousand arguments each time a new one is released. 

Maybe the true measure of Johnson’s prowess isn’t whether she fits into a particular niche, but her ability to stand out and make herself the most talked-about aspect of any movie she’s in, bad or good. Some actors want success, while others perform for the love of the art. But a true movie star can do both without letting on which one they enjoy more. As Lucy comes to understand, we’re all trying to sell our value to strangers, even if we don’t always realize it. But Johnson has cleverly weaponized her nepo baby status, using it to stay in the cultural conversation long enough to prove herself with each new film — or at least the ones she actually cares about. Whether the movie itself is a bomb or a blockbuster doesn’t matter; if Dakota Johnson is starring in it, people will talk about it either way.