The 12 Best Dakota Johnson Movies, Ranked

One of Hollywood's premier nepo babies (and we say that with love), as the daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, Dakota Johnson was always going to be able to have a career in the entertainment industry if she wanted it. And although she's had a few missteps over the years ("Madame Web" comes immediately to mind, and "Fifty Shades of Grey" isn't far behind), she's also been in a number of spectacular films.

With an easy charm and a dry sense of humor, Johnson can usually be relied upon to make a positive impression in whatever movies she appears in. She's been acting for 15 years now (not counting a childhood cameo in her mother's film "Crazy in Alabama" back in 1999), so she has plenty of credits in her filmography. But which of her movies are the best of the best? Some are high-profile blockbusters, while others are smaller indies, but they're all top-tier Dakota Johnson films.

Look, sometimes an engagement just gets away from you. You have every intention of getting married on a reasonable timeline and then life gets in the way. That's the case in the romantic comedy "The Five-Year Engagement" starring Jason Segel and Emily Blunt, when a happily engaged couple see their relationship torn to shreds as various obstacles emerge that prevent them from tying the knot. 

After the two temporarily separate and attempt to move on, Tom (Segel) moves to San Francisco where he begins working as a sous chef and dating Audrey, the hostess of the restaurant played by none other than Dakota Johnson. Although their relationship is ultimately short-lived, since the main couple have to at least try to get back together or this isn't much of a rom-com, Johnson makes the most of her limited screentime. "The Five-Year Engagement" was a modest success at the box office, but nowadays it's better remembered for featuring several comedic rising stars, including Chris Pratt, Alison Brie, and Kumail Nanjiani.

These days, the town of Somerville just outside of Boston has been pretty thoroughly gentrified, but back in the 1970s there was some pretty substantial mob activity, especially in the Winter Hill neighborhood where Whitey Bulger ran things. In "Black Mass," we get an up close and personal look at Bulger (played by Johnny Depp) as he makes the decision to turn government informant against his fellow members of the Irish mob. Dakota Johnson has a small but crucial role in the film as Bulger's girlfriend Lindsay, with whom he shares a young son, Douglas. 

After a severe allergic reaction to aspirin, Douglas tragically passes away. Within the context of the film, Lindsay and Douglas represent Whitey's lingering ties to his humanity as two of the few people he cares deeply for and is made vulnerable by. The crime drama received generally positive reviews and led to Depp's Screen Actors Guild nomination for Best Actor, while some critics argued that he should have received an Oscar nomination for the role.

In "The High Note," Tracee Ellis Ross portrays Grace Davis, a legendary R&B singer whose career has ebbed into what we might call a comfortable lull. She's resistant to the idea of releasing new music, but is also not thrilled by the idea of taking up a Las Vegas residency, a step on the road to retirement for formerly great music icons courting irrelevance. Dakota Johnson plays Maggie, Grace's personal assistant who dreams of becoming a music producer. Between bolstering Grace's self-confidence and nurturing the career of David (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a talented young musician who Maggie hopes to work with one day, she's got a lot on her plate. Although the theatrical release of "The High Note" was stymied by the COVID-19 pandemic, it nonetheless received largely positive reviews from critics and performed well as a video-on-demand title. 

What makes "The High Note" especially interesting is how close to the heart it must have been for Ross, as the daughter of famed singer Diana Ross, although she has said that the character of Grace Davis was not based on her mother. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, she explained, "The story really has nothing to do with any of the things that I know from my mom's experience. Except for the fact that there's a real humanity to this woman and she's not a paper-thin quote-unquote diva that the world usually paints larger-than-life women as. She's a real person. That's the only connection that I can draw."

Seven years after the release of "The Five-Year Engagement," "Our Friend" sees Dakota Johnson and Jason Segel team up again, this time under much more dramatic circumstances. Johnson plays Nicole, a young married woman who is grappling with the devastation of a terminal cancer diagnosis. While she and her husband Matthew (Casey Affleck) are coming to terms with their new reality, their close friend Dane (Jason Segel) moves in to help out. And of course, the trio all learn from one another and draw the strength that they need to manage the next steps in their lives, however difficult they may be. 

A classic tearjerker, "Our Friend" was based on a true story as written by the real-life Matthew Teague in an Esquire article. Although it received positive reviews for its tenderness and sentimentality, "Our Friend" was yet another cinematic victim of the theater shutdown during the COVID-19 epidemic, slumping onto video-on-demand at the beginning of 2021. It's not an easy watch, but there's something inherently moving about how these three friends help each other through the most challenging experiences of their lives.

Celine Song's first film, the achingly melancholic "Past Lives," knocked the socks off pretty much everyone, so to say that expectations were high for her sophomore directorial effort is an understatement. In 2025, she released "Materialists," a romantic comedy starring Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, and Chris Evans. In it, Johnson plays Lucy, a woman who works at a high-end matchmaking company in New York City which has ironically made her more than a little disillusioned at the entire concept of love and relationships. 

She's certainly not finding any easy answers in her own love life, torn between a new fling who on paper seems like the perfect guy (Pedro Pascal) and her ex for whom she's still carrying something of a torch (Chris Evans). Johnson's naturally dry standoffishness is an excellent match for the charm offensive launched by both Pascal and Evans, offering a thoughtful, mature perspective on relationships that is often overlooked in romantic comedies. In a cinematic landscape where rom-coms are so often foisted onto streaming services, "Materialists" proved that they still have a place in cinemas.

A remake of the classic Dario Argento horror film from 1977, "Suspiria" gives us a combination of spooky witchcraft and high camp as only director Luca Guadagnino could provide. It stars Dakota Johnson as Susie, a young American dancer who moves to Germany to attend an elite ballet academy. But unbeknownst to her, dance isn't the only thing they teach at this school — it's also got a roaring trade in the dark arts. Like many Guadagnino films, it was ultimately polarizing among critics and performed poorly at the box office, although many praised specific qualities of the film, including its unique aesthetic, inventive dance sequences, and A+ use of Tilda Swinton. 

Johnson and Guadagnino had previously worked together on "A Bigger Splash," and although by all accounts Johnson found the project creatively fulfilling, she wasn't shy about the fact that surrounding herself with such dark subject matter for the entire length of the shoot left a mark on her psyche. "[Filming] 'Suspiria,' no lie, f***ed me up so much that I had to go to therapy," she told Elle. "We were in an abandoned hotel on top of a mountain. It had 30 telephone poles on the roof, so there was electricity pulsating through the building, and everyone was shocking each other." Her efforts were rewarded by the Independent Spirit Awards, where "Suspiria" won the Robert Altman Award, which is a group award that honors the cast, director, and casting director of the celebrated film.

Unlike many of the films included on this list where Dakota Johnson is part of a larger ensemble, "Daddio" is an old-fashioned two-hander — the vast majority of the production revolves around Johnson and her costar Sean Penn. And on the face of it, it's kind of a tough sell, seemingly much better suited for the stage than the big screen, given the fact that it's basically just one long conversation between the two main characters — Girlie (Johnson), who hails a cab from JFK late one evening and spends the majority of the ride chatting with her driver (Penn) about everything under the sun. 

In fact, "Daddio" languished on the Black List, an annual list of screenplays that readers enjoyed but were considered for one reason or another to be unfilmable. But eventually, it found a home and was released in 2024. Critics praised the performances of Johnson and Penn and the chemistry the two shared on screen together. Johnson found the character of Girlie refreshing to play, telling Screen Rant that "it is becoming more and more clear to me as I continue to work in this industry and broaden my career that [I want to] tell stories about human connection and honest people — women, men. Being true, even though it may not be popular or acceptable, is becoming more and more important to me."

A group of eccentrics who each have a secret all checking into a hotel in the desert during the late '60s? Sign us up, please. "Bad Times at the El Royale" features a compelling ensemble cast of characters who have all arrived at the El Royale for their own reasons, few of which they're eager to share with one another. But as their paths continue to cross and they are constantly thrown together, chaos unfolds. Dakota Johnson plays Emily Summerspring, a young hippie who has just rescued her younger sister Rose (Cailee Spaeny) from a cult run by the unsettlingly charismatic Billy Lee (Chris Hemsworth). 

It didn't take long for "Bad Times at the El Royale" to develop a cult following of its own, as audiences were drawn in by the strange and fascinating patrons of the titular hotel. As a circuitous neo-noir, you get out of what you put into it, and if you're willing to invest in the film, "Bad Times at the El Royale" pays off massively with popcorn thrills. For Johnson's part, she was attracted to the film thanks to its uncompromising, balls-to-the-wall storytelling. "It's hardcore," she said in an interview with The Times. "My character does terrible things, but only as she's fiercely protective of her sister. It's a devotion I found beautiful."

In "The Peanut Butter Falcon," a young man with Down syndrome named Zak (Zack Gottsagen) steals away from the institution where he had been living, crossing paths with and ultimately befriending a taciturn fisherman (Shia LeBeouf, then in the midst of a short-lived redemption tour after a string of abuse allegations and erratic behavior). Zak dreams of becoming a professional wrestler and wants to travel to an academy where he can train under his hero, and Tyler (LeBeouf), equally eager to get out of town, agrees to help him. Meanwhile, social worker Eleanor (Dakota Johnson) is desperately trying to track Zak down so that she can bring him home, only to shift gears when she learns of the restrictions he'll face as punishment for his escape. 

"The Peanut Butter Falcon" received a great deal of praise for its lead performances, especially from newcomer Zack Gottsagen, whose work in the film as an actor with Down syndrome goes a long way in furthering representation within the industry. It ultimately became a sleeper hit, earning back nearly four times its modest budget of $6.2 million.

You think that by the time you're in your 30s, you're going to have at least some of the major stuff sorted out, but it's often really just the beginning of your journey of self-discovery. At 32, Lucy's (Dakota Johnson) life is pretty much defined by her close relationship with her best friend and roommate Jane (Sonoya Mizuno), a dynamic that threatens to change when Jane announces that she and her boyfriend Danny are planning on moving to London as the result of a promotion at work. 

While the two have a few drinks (OK, probably more than a few) to celebrate, Lucy confesses to Jane that she thinks she might be a lesbian. With Jane's encouragement, Lucy begins to explore her sexuality, starting by tentatively dating her colleague Brittany (Kiersey Clemons). The result is an intimate, deeply personal story penned by Lauren Pomerantz and directed by Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne. Authentic and relatable, "Am I OK?" represents some of Dakota Johnson's best work, and a reminder that it's never too late to change your life.

Hot on the heels of his surprise hit debut "S#!%house," Cooper Raiff directed and starred in another coming-of-age film, "Cha Cha Real Smooth." It revolves around a recent college graduate, Andrew (Raiff), who doesn't quite know what to do with his life, but finds an unexpected niche as a hype man for his community's many bar and bat mitzvahs. Teenagers can be awkward at parties, and sometimes they need an extroverted, fun-loving presence to break the ice — that's where Andrew comes in. 

While at one of these bat mitzvahs, he meets Domino (Dakota Johnson, who also produced the film) and her autistic teenager daughter Lola (Vanessa Burghardt), and the three develop an immediate rapport. Andrew falls hard for Domino, but her life is much more complicated than his. After winning an Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, "Cha Cha Real Smooth" caused a bidding war that ultimately led to Apple TV+ acquiring the distribution rights for a staggering $15 million. The plucky romantic comedy is as earnest and likable as its two lead performances, making it an understated but emotionally resonant crowd pleaser.

Based on a novel by Elena Ferrante, "The Lost Daughter" punctures a hole in the sunny myth of motherhood as a perpetually emotionally fulfilling state of being. It stars Olivia Colman as Leda, who crosses paths with a harried young mother (Nina, played by Dakota Johnson) while on holiday. The two become friendly (despite the fact that Leda has, for some reason, has inexplicably stolen Nina's daughter's beloved doll) to the extent that they find themselves confessing uncomfortable truths that they wouldn't be able to tell anyone else. 

Nina finds her marriage oppressive and the crush of motherhood stifling, while Leda drops the bomb that she left her husband and two daughters for three years to escape from the responsibility of her role in their lives, only returning when she genuinely began to miss them. You can almost feel hordes of Facebook mom groups turning to dust at the mere thought. For it's unflinchingly honest take on motherhood, "The Lost Daughter" received widespread critical acclaim, and was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress for Jessie Buckley (who plays the younger version of Leda), Best Actress for Olivia Colman, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Maggie Gyllenhaal. This marked Gyllenhaal's directorial debut, and "The Lost Daughter" immediately became one of her best films.