An A-list family and a wellness routine to rival Gwyneth's: inside the world of Dakota Johnson

It has been somewhat of a rollercoaster few weeks for Dakota Johnson. 

Having just wrapped a press tour for Marvel’s Madame Web, which received a slew of one (and zero) star reviews, and was variously described as “chaotic,” “unhinged,” and a “disaster”, one might expect the 34-year-old actress to be in rather poor spirits. 

However, it appears Johnson has some more positive news to distract her from the cinematic trainwreck – it looks as though she and Coldplay frontman Chris Martin are engaged. The news comes six years after their relationship began and a source has told the Mirror it was “inevitable”, since the A-list couple had been besotted with each other from day one.

 “The couple got engaged a while ago and have kept the news private. But now they are being open about it with their circles,” the source said. “They have been besotted with each other from day one so taking this next step was inevitable. They are in no rush to plan the wedding but are just enjoying making their commitment official.”

Johnson and 47-year-old Martin have kept their romance private since they first began their relationship in 2017, the year after Martin famously “consciously uncoupled” from Oscar-winning actress and Goop mogul Gwyneth Paltrow. Queen of a viral moment, like Paltrow, Johnson has also found internet fame discussing her wellness routine, famously revealing that she likes to get 14 hours of sleep a night, and bathes at any time of day because she finds that “water is really grounding”. 

From her nepo baby roots to her sweet friendship with Paltrow, here is everything you need to know about Johnson and her relationship with Chris Martin.

If there was a prize for the amount of blue underlined names in the “early life” Wikipedia section, Johnson would certainly be in the running for the crown.  Her parents are Hollywood juggernauts Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith – Griffith has a host of huge blockbuster hits to her name including Lolita, Working Girl and Roar, while Johnson has starred in films Miami Vice, Knives Out and Django Unchained.

Meanwhile, her stepfather is Oscar-nominated Spanish actor Antonio Banderas, and she is also the granddaughter of actress Tippi Hedren, who starred in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds and Marnie. Dare I say it – her web connects them all. 

But when it comes to the nepo baby discourse, Johnson is not here for it.  “When that first started I found it to be incredibly annoying and boring,” the actress said in an interview with The Today Show last month. She continued: “If you’re a journalist, then write about something else. That’s just lame.” (Oops sorry, Dakota). 

Johnson spent long stretches of her childhood on her parents’ film sets, attending innumerable schools for a few months here or there. In typical A-lister style, she started therapy at the age of just three. “The whole shebang, all the help you can get,” she said candidly in a 2017 interview. Dealing with her parents’ divorce in 1996 and their well-publicised struggles with drugs and alcohol, she described herself as “ so consistently unmoored and discombobulated. I didn’t have an anchor anywhere.”

Johnson has become somewhat of an internet sensation for her IDGAF attitude (remember “no that’s not true Ellen,”?). But she most recently found internet virality when describing her unorthodox wellness routine, which famously included sleeping for 14 hours a night. 

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, rather than schilling an expensive slew of products, Johnson spoke frankly about her obsession with sleep. “I’m not functional if I get less than 10 [hours],” she said. “I can easily go 14 hours.”

“I don’t have a regular [wake-up] time. It depends on what’s happening in my life,” she continued. “If I’m not working, if I have a day off on a Monday, then I will sleep as long as I can. Sleep is my number one priority in life.”

She also revealed she will “get in a bathtub at any time of day” saying: “If in the middle of the day, I’m like, ‘Oh God, what is this world?’ I’ll get in the bathtub. I find water really grounding.”

She also meditates twice daily, explaining, “I meditate every day, twice a day. I do transcendental meditation. I’ve been really into breathwork recently and that’s been helping me a lot with anxiety.”

Johnson has previously spoken candidly about her mental health struggles. While being honoured for her depression advocacy work at the 17th Annual HOPE Luncheon Seminar in December, she recalled an incident with her now fiance.  “A few weeks ago I was having a low day,” she began. “My partner said to me so kindly, ‘Are you really struggling?’. I said, ‘No’.

“'He said, ‘Baby, you're wearing a Cats T-shirt’. Like Cats, the musical. It turns out I was really struggling.”

She continued: “But that moment lifted my heart, and it pulled me out of it. I think most of the time I speak about depression or anxiety in a very self-deprecating way. Perhaps it is easier to look it in the eyes if I wear the mask of comedy.”

“Covering my pain or anxiety in comedy is a lifelong tool and I don't think it's a bad thing. It works. It helps me because sometimes if I don't laugh, I'll cry.”

Not unlike Martin’s ex-wife Paltrow, Johnson has also described herself as a “sexual person”. Speaking to Vanity Fair in 2022 about Fifty Shades of Grey, she said: “I'm a sexual person, and when I'm interested in something, I want to know so much about it.”

“That's why I did those big naked movies. I signed up to do a very different version of the film we ended up making.”

Johnson also described the making of  Fifty Shades as “psychotic” and lamented that the films lacked the sexual intensity she envisaged when agreeing to take on her starring role as Anastasia Steele 

Johnson and Martin met through mutual friends and have “never really left each other” since, the actress told Vanity Fair in June 2022.

They were first spotted together in 2017, the year after the musician “consciously uncoupled” from Paltrow. They appeared to be on a date at a sushi restaurant in LA, and were "cosy, laughing and affectionate," a source told PEOPLE. At the time, however, it was unclear if they were an item, as the pair's reps didn't offer any comment on the sighting.

But a month later, Johnson was seen at a Coldplay concert in Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

In early 2018, the pair continued spending time together, and were spotted by several eagle-eyed celeb-watchers on quiet dates in LA.  In January, they were seen having an intimate dinner at Soho House in Malibu. "Chris and Dakota arrived together in Chris' car. They met up with friends and had a fun night," a witness told PEOPLE. "They both seemed very happy. They were flirty, and also left the restaurant together."

Later that month, Martin and Johnson were spotted arm in arm walking on the beach, as reported by PEOPLE.  According to one source, they spent "most of the weekend together in Malibu."

It wasn’t until March 2018 that made their first public appearance at Stella McCartney's Autumn 2018 Collection. Later that year, after a year of rumours, Johnson finally acknowledged the relationship in a somewhat roundabout way during a 2018 interview with Tatler, saying simply, "I'm not going to talk about it, but I am very happy."

The couple have lived together in a multi-million Malibu beach house since 2021. 

The couple support each others professional endeavours, with Dakota appearing at Chris' gigs, and Chris at Dakota's premieres. In a recent interview, Johnson spoke freely about her relationship with the singer, gushing over her love for watching him perform. “I love watching him,” she told Bustle. “I could watch him every day. I don’t know how to explain it. I feel like, I don’t know... I’m watching my most favourite being do his most favourite thing.”

They have even worked together once, with Dakota the director of Coldplay's 2020 music video for the song Cry Cry Cry.

According to the Mirror, the couple have been engaged for a while, with Johnson spotted wearing an emerald green ring on her wedding finger at her 34th birthday in LA last October.

In a recent interview with Bustle, after casually referring to her fiance and Gwyneth Paltrow’s son Moses as her stepson, Johnson opened up about her relationship with Martin’s children. “I love those kids like my life depends on it. With all my heart,” Dakota said of Apple and Moses.

“I grew up in a family that was so big, and I just believe in the saying "Blood is thicker than water,"' she explained.

“I think because I grew up in [having a blended family], it’s come more naturally, but I wouldn’t have it any other way really,” Johnson continued. “I really wouldn’t. I love it. It feels very honest. It feels really authentic. No one’s hiding anything.”

“I have four brothers and two sisters, and my two sisters are not blood-related to each other, but they are sisters and they call each other sisters and they are always together,” she said. “And my two older brothers are not blood-related to each other. And they are brothers.”

Paltrow, who is now happily married to writer and director Brad Falchuck, also appears to have given the couple her blessing. In a 2020 interview with Harper's Bazaar, she opened up about her ex-husband's new relationship, saying that she and Martin maintained a close relationship after their divorce. 

"It's a lifelong commitment to constantly reinvent your relationship with your ex, which you do presumably because you have children together. I don't see a reason to do it if you don't have children together," she said.

She explained that Johnson had become part of their family. "I love her. I can see how it would seem weird because it's sort of unconventional. But I think, in this case, just having passed through it iteratively, I just adore her," she said. "I always start to think of the ampersand sign — what else can you bring in, instead of being resistant to or being made insecure by? There's so much juice in leaning into something like that."

Paltrow even recently posted a sweet picture of herself and Johnson holding hands to her Instagram story.

And the family could soon be getting even bigger, as Johnson recently revealed that she’s open to having children of her own.

“I’m so open to that. I’ve gotten to this place where I really want to experience everything that life has to offer. And especially being a woman, I’m like, What a magical f*cking thing to do.

“What a crazy, magical, wild experience. If that’s meant to happen for me, I’m totally down for it. I’ve been really tripping out recently like, we’re not here for very long.

“There’s so much to eat up and learn and grow from and experience and feel. That includes all the pain and the suffering and feeling so helpless about the world. Most days I feel like the most useless piece of sh*t… And then I’m like, ‘We’re not here for very long, so if I’m meant to be a mother, bring it on’.”