Dakota Johnson: ‘Sleep is my number one priority in life’
In an interview with the ‘Wall Street Journal,’ the ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ actress explained that she cannot function on less than 10 hours sleep a night, and can easily ‘go 14 hours′
When Napoleon Bonaparte was asked how many hours of sleep were necessary, he is reputed to have replied: “Six hours for a man, seven for a woman and eight for a fool.”
Despite what the French military leader said, most people need between seven and eight hours of sleep a night, but although not everybody always manages this, there are a few who have the privilege of enjoying considerably more when they need it. Dakota Johnson revealed earlier this week in a laid-back interview with The Wall Street Journal’s lifestyle magazine that she usually sleeps 10 hours a day and that she maintains this ritual at all costs to ensure a calm state of mind. In fact, the 34-year-old actress added: “I’m not functional if I get less than 10. I can easily go 14 hours.”
Johnson, the daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, has always spoken openly and sincerely about mental health and on several occasions has detailed how the depression she suffered at the age of 15 was a major stumbling block in her life. She is under no doubt that rest is not only a way to ensure better skin and fitness but, above all, greater clarity when facing life.
“I don’t have a set time [to wake up],” she told the WSJ. “It depends on what’s happening in my life. 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.” In addition to rest, the Fifty Shades of Grey star dedicates part of her day to meditation. “I do transcendental meditation. I’ve been really into breathwork recently and that’s been helping me a lot with anxiety.”
Johnson also talked about her latest work, voicing the IFC Films documentary about Shere Hite, the feminist sex educator who rose to fame in the 1970s with the publication of her groundbreaking book The Hite Report, for which she compiled the results of her surveys of thousands of women about their sex lives. She was so criticized that she went to live in Europe. Johnson took the opportunity to defend Hite’s work: “The documentary is about Shere Hite and how she was basically completely blotted out of history and totally silenced when she was presenting quantifiable data about female sexuality and female orgasm. It’s kind of amazing that these two things coincided to exist simultaneously.”
