From a young age, Dakota Johnson knew she wanted to be an actress.
This fact was confirmed when her father, Don Johnson, appeared on the March 9 episode of Late Night With Seth Meyers and recalled a conversation he had with the 31-year-old star back when she was in high school. The topic came up after Seth Meyers asked if Dakota ever does or did ask Don for career advice.
“That bus left. She doesn’t need any advice from me,” the Knives Out alum replied. “The funny thing about her is—we have a rule in the family that, you know, if you stay in school, you get to stay on the payroll. So, you go to college, you get to stay on the payroll. Towards the end of high school, I went to her and I said, ‘So, do you want to go visit some colleges?’ Or something like that. And she was like, ‘Oh, no. I’m not going to college.'”
Don told his daughter this meant she “won’t be on the payroll anymore” and asked how she was “going to manage.” But Dakota simply told him, “Don’t you worry about it.”
He certainly didn’t have to. “Three weeks later she had nailed down that part in David Fincher‘s The Social Network,” Don said, “and the rest is, shall we say, cinema history.”