Dakota Johnson has her West Hollywood home under contract for $6 million. She listed it June 2. It was under offer in a week.
She paid $3.55 million for it in January 2016. She was 26. It was the first major purchase with her own money — money she’d made from Fifty Shades of Grey. She’d been living in New York. The franchise changed what was possible and she went looking for a house.
She found this one on the second visit. Carl Maston built it in 1947. Maston knew Neutra and Lautner — the three of them used to eat at Musso & Frank’s, where a hostess worked that all of them were apparently after. Maston married her. He built her this house on Marmont Avenue, tucked into a quiet cul-de-sac just above the Chateau Marmont. Ryan Murphy owned it at some point after that. Then Johnson bought it from Murphy in 2016.
She described it to Architectural Digest as “like a tree house. On a boat.”
She hired Pierce & Ward to redo the interiors. They kept Maston’s bones — the glass walls, the exposed beams, the brick. The second floor had cork floors that designer Emily Ward said weren’t salvageable, though she admitted they were “really cool.” Hardwood went in instead. The kitchen went green. Benjamin Moore’s Alligator Alley. The primary bathroom got a custom pink, mixed to match a sweater Johnson owned from The Row. She added a soaking tub and double sinks, which she said were “the key to a healthy relationship.”
In her office downstairs she kept a Polaroid of Hunter S. Thompson — her father Don Johnson’s best friend, who she called a godfather to her. On the walls: paintings by David Hockney and Harmony Korine. Her grandmother is Tippi Hedren. The house suited the lineage.
In March 2020 Architectural Digest featured the house on its cover. The video tour went viral. Not because of the architecture — because Johnson walked into the kitchen, hovered her hand over a bowl of limes on the counter, and said she loved them. Deadpan. She said later she didn’t even know the limes were there. It was set dressing. She walked in and found them. Jimmy Fallon asked her about it on The Tonight Show. She told him she was actually allergic to limes. Mildly. They make her tongue itch.
She told AD at the time she’d never sell the place. “I was immediately drawn to how it was clean but also cozy,” she said. “I thought, I’ll never want to sell this place.”
She’s accepted an offer but it still needs to close. Ruby Fay of Engel & Völkers Beverly Hills holds the listing. The accepted price hasn’t been disclosed. It’d be interesting to know if movie stars face the same market headwinds the rest of us mere mortals in the flats face.
Johnson had already moved on before the listing hit. She bought a Mediterranean-style house in Outpost Estates in October for $5.3 million. Before that, she and Chris Martin bought a Malibu mansion together in 2020 for $12.5 million and sold it for $14.4 million after they split. The two ended their eight-year on-and-off relationship in 2025.
I read a lot of Hunter Thompson.
I didn’t know he and DJ were friends.
Interesting…