During an interview with Vanity Fair, the 32-year-old star touched on many aspects of her life, including her grandmother Tippi Hedren’s history with Hitchcock. When Hedren’s was cast in his film, The Birds, her daughter, Griffith, was only four years old, but she seemingly wasn’t spared from the director’s torment. Johnson recalls that one Christmas, Hitchcock gifted Griffith a tiny model of her mother in a coffin, which Johnson called “alarming and dark and really, really sad for that little girl.” Hedren was an acclaimed actress and a muse for Hitchcock, who appeared in his films, The Birds and Marnie. In her 2016 memoir, Tippi: A Memoir, Hedren claimed she was sexually assaulted by the director during the making of both films and forced to endure inhumane conditions. She explained that when she rejected his advances, he tried to ruin her acting career. Johnson echoed this in her Vanity Fair interview, stating that her grandmother “was an amazing actress and [Hitchcock] stopped her from having a career.” “What happened with my grandmother was horrific because Hitchcock was a tyrant. He was talented and prolific—and important in terms of art—but power can poison people,” Johnson continued. Hedren, an actor and activist, also shared in her memoir (via Vanity Fair) that she once asked Hitchcock’s wife, Alma Reville, for help, explaining that “[Alma’s] exact words were, ‘Tippi, I’m so sorry you have to go through this.’” Hedren wrote, “I looked at her and said, ‘But, Alma, you could stop it!’ And her eyes sort of glazed over and she walked away.” Johnson also touched on her own acting career, specifically the role of Anastasia Steele in the Fifty Shades franchise, stating: “If I had known at the time that’s what it was going to be like, I don’t think anyone would’ve done it. It would’ve been like, ‘Oh, this is psychotic.’ But no, I don’t regret it.” Next, Dakota Johnson Says Filming Fifty Shades Movies Was “Psychotic”
