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Dakota Johnson 'grateful' for 'crazy' upbringing

Dakota Johnson grateful for childhood credit:Bang Showbiz
Dakota Johnson grateful for childhood credit:Bang Showbiz

Dakota Johnson is "grateful" for her "crazy" upbringing.

The 32-year-old actress moved schools frequently as a teenager and had a lot of people stepping in to look after her because of her mother Melanie Griffith and father Don Johnson's acting commitments, but despite the upheaval, she wouldn't have had things any other way.

She said: "Maybe it was destabilising, but I never looked at it that way. Iwas raised by lots of people, my mom and my dad and then stepparents and nannies and tutors and friends and teachers and then friends’ parents and boyfriends’ parents. I wanted to learn from everybody. And I still am like that.

"’m grateful to my parents and my crazy life because the only reason I am the way I am is because of how I grew up.

"And that came with seeing some gnarly things as a kid, having to deal with adult content at a young age and also having a public life at times.

"But then also on the lighter side of that, things that were really beautiful and privileged and educational and the travel and the art and the artists.

"It was both: It was dark, dark, dark, dark, and it was light, light, bright lights.”

The 'Lost Daughter' star always had a "deep craving" to follow in her parents' footsteps.

She recalled to The Hollywood Reporter: “Acting was always — truly always — what I wanted to do. Even when I was so little and I would be on set with my mom, it was a deep craving to do it. I wanted to look at everybody doing their jobs. I couldn’t get enough.”

Dakota was eventually allowed to take on a small role in her stepfather Antonio Banderas' movie 'Crazy in Alabama' when she was 10 but her parents refused to allow her to quit school to pursue her dream, even though her education at the time was largely done via tutors.

She said: "I was playing my mom’s daughter, and my little sister [Stella Banderas] was in it as well. It was a family affair. But I took it very seriously.

"After that, I didn’t work until I was 18 or 19.

"If it were up to me, I would’ve left school. But my parents wanted me to finish, which was ironic because the first half of my life was traveling and never going to school and being with a tutor. I didn’t go to a full year of school until I was 11, and that was in San Francisco because my dad was filming 'Nash Bridges.'”

But the 'Fifty Shades of Grey' actress doesn't resent her parents for their decision.

She said: “I’m happy. I think it all goes as it’s supposed to.”