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American mother gunned down in Mali massacre: Aid worker is named as first victim after terrorists slaughtered 27 at hotel favored by Westerners leaving bodies piled up in gore-spattered corridors
EXCLUSIVE - The extreme lengths five young Syrian men went to in bid to enter the US amid ISIS fears: Greek passports forged in Brazil, hopping from country to country and not checking luggage to avoid scrutiny
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UN Security Council approves 'all necessary measures' to fight the 'global and unprecedented threat' of ISIS in wake of Paris attacks
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BAZ BAMIGBOYE: Fifty Shades siren Dakota Johnson gets even ruder

Published: 19:12 EST, 19 November 2015 | Updated: 23:54 EST, 19 November 2015

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Dakota Johnson, who ore a strip off Johnny Depp, directing a volley of expletives at the poor man that turned the air blue

Dakota Johnson told me about the time she tore a strip off Johnny Depp, directing a volley of expletives at the poor man that turned the air blue.

Luckily for Depp, it was in a film.

Johnson was getting ready to shoot a crucial moment in powerful film Black Mass, in which she portrays Lindsey Cyr, common-law wife of brutal South Boston (‘Southie’) gangster James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, played by Depp.

Director Scott Cooper knelt beside the 26-year-old actress and talked her through the scene. She and Depp are in the waiting room of a hospital, where their young son is being treated for a grave illness.

‘He said: “You might be losing your baby. And your partner has turned on you, making it your fault! Just go!”’ she recalled. ‘I unleashed all the profanities I’d ever learned — and some I didn’t know I’d learned,’ she laughed.

‘Bulger comes in and out of her life, but her boy is her life. And I just imagined the rage that would ignite in a woman who was being blamed for her son’s illness.’

For me, that moment proved that Dakota will not be defined solely by the role of submissive Anastasia Steele, the character she plays (opposite Jamie Dornan) in sex and bondage saga Fifty Shades Of Grey, a big box-office hit earlier in the year. (She will begin filming the second part of the trilogy, Fifty Shades Darker, early next year.)

‘I don’t see myself being defined by anything,’ Johnson insists. ‘I’m constantly learning and ever evolving — I’m full of surprises. And I’ve got a few more tricks up my sleeve.’

One of them is that she will continue to take small but interesting roles, like the one in Black Mass, so she can work with and learn from people like Depp and co-stars Joel Edgerton and Benedict Cumberbatch.

Her character in Black Mass is also surprisingly unglamorous. ‘Lindsey was young, but somehow she’s so old, and so weary. I think she gave up everything for Bulger and for their baby.

‘It was pretty common for a woman in Southie to meet a man, have a baby, and give up her job because the father would provide.

‘But I would imagine, if you knew that your husband was involved in organised crime, there would be a part of you that would be wondering if he would ever walk through the door again.’

It’s all a world away from Dakota’s own life. Her parents are actors Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson. Her stepfather is Antonio Banderas. And her grandmother is Hitchcock heroine Tippi Hedren — who runs a wildlife sanctuary full of lions and tigers.

‘I was brought up in an environment where I was exposed to things that were exciting and colourful — and sometimes dark and scary,’ she tells me. ‘My family is never dull,’ she adds, drily.

Her grandmother keeps lions and tigers in a sanctuary on the West Coast. Dakota loved growing up around those wild beasts, an experience she has found useful.

‘Yes, it’s true that there are big cats in Hollywood to be aware of, too,’ she says, noting that she can take care of herself.

If she wants to get away from big beasts and everything else, she’ll visit an art gallery or, if she has more time, take herself off to her mother’s cabin, high on a mountain in Colorado, accompanied by her dog Zeppelin.

‘It’s where I grew up, and where I’m at peace. It’s a place that’s way removed from everything, and I come back into my body then.’

Black Mass opens in cinemas here on November 27.

Downton Anna's new co-stars Eight cats... all called Bob!

Joanne Froggatt, who has graced our television screens for the past six seasons as Anna the lady's maid on Downton Abbey, chooses her words carefully when describing some of her new co-stars because, frankly, they can be a little catty.

The actress has just finished shooting some scenes for A Street Cat Named Bob (or 'A Streetcar Named Bob', as both of us keep referring to it), based on the best-selling books by James Bowen, a former drug addict, who kicked his habit - cold turkey - with a lot of help from a stray ginger Tom he named Bob.

Joanne plays Val, Bowen’s key counsellor, who guides him through his methadone treatment and keeps him on the straight and narrow during the perilous months of withdrawal.

'I like cats and dogs!' says Joanne, who grew up on a farm, while telling me, diplomatically, that filming on Streetcat had been 'interesting'.

Purr-fect role: Joanne Frogatt with Luke Treadaway. The actress has just finished shooting scenes for A Street Cat Named Bob, based on best-selling books by James Bowen

Adam Rolston, the producer who cannily snapped up the screen rights to the Bob books, reveals that big-screen Bob was played by a total of eight cats. But the real Bob was used as much as possible, because director Roger Spottiswoode had a good working relationship with him; the camera loved him - and so did Luke Treadaway, the actor portraying Bowen.

Joanne laughs and says that, during filming, four of those eight moggies ‘fell by the wayside'.

'There’s a reason why "like herding cats" is an expression,' she says. 'The cats have been great but, well, they’re cats.'

Joanne's character, Val, is an amalgam of several people who helped Bowen get off the streets and into sheltered accommodation in Tottenham, North London. 'Val’s nice, but tough,' Joanne says.

Key consultants in these situations have often had to deal with addiction in their own lives, the actress added, 'whether themselves, or a close family member’.

‘It’s a job, and they get paid, but it’s a vocation, too. They go beyond to help. Also, because they’ve helped a family member, they can recognise the signals in others,' said Joanne, who visited a residential centre and listened in on candid conversations from members of a support group who had finished treatment and been clean for a while.

The story of James and Bob is 'incredibly sweet' she told me, 'but this isn’t a fairy tale'.

'It deals with some dark issues,' she added; such as what drove Bowen, a product of a broken home, to seek solace in class A drugs.

Bowen's books, written with author Garry Jenkins, have enjoyed phenomenal sales in the UK and across Europe (two million copies in Germany alone).

Joanne’s involvement in the big screen adaptation is proof of her determination not to be typecast by her role in Julian Fellowes' super successful series.

In her first post-Downton project, two-part ITV drama Dark Angel, she played mass murderer Mary Ann Cotton.

Today (Friday) she goes before cameras to start work on another movie, Starfish, in which she and co-star Tom Riley play real-life husband and wife Tom and Nicola Ray.

Tom initially thought he had food poisoning but had, in fact, contracted a life-threatening disease called Pneumococcal Septicaemia, closely related to meningitis. 'He woke up in hospital and found that his limbs had been amputated, and much of his face was gone,' Joanne tells me.

'While he was having those operations, Nicola was in hospital giving birth to their second child.'

It sounds unbearably sad, but she insists that the film, written and directed by Bill Clark, 'is the most beautiful love story. It’s about them trying to rebuild their life together, and about him trying to regain his spirit.'

After that Joanne and her husband James Cannon will move to Los Angeles for several months.

‘We’re going to hang out there for a while and see what happens. We’ll have a nice bit of sunshine. If something happens, great. If it doesn’t, then that's OK too.'

Watch out for...

Gemma Chan who more than holds her own as the sole woman in Jamie Lloyd’s scorching production of Harold Pinter’s play The Homecoming, which also includes an electrifying performance by Ron Cook.

The great ensemble includes John Simm, John Macmillan, Gary Kemp and Keith Allen.

They all inject a fresh vitality into the 50-year-old play about menace and desire that’s now on at London’s Trafalgar Studios under the banner of the Jamie Lloyd Company and the Ambassador Theatre Group.

Gemma Chan, who is starring in Jamie Lloyd's scorching production of Harold Pinter's play The Homecoming

Nicole Kidman who will be giving her final performances tomorrow in Anna Ziegler’s play Photograph 51, where the Oscar-winning actress has been portraying DNA pioneer Rosalind Franklin.

I caught up again with Michael Grandage’s show at the Noel Coward Theatre and was struck by how absolutely convincing Kidman is as the brilliant, no-nonsense, unheralded discoverer of the DNA double helix.

After the play, Kidman joined Grandage and fellow cast members Stephen Campbell Moore, Will Attenborough, Edward Bennett, Patrick Kennedy and Joshua Silver on stage for a Q & A with alumni from Franklin’s alma mater, Newnham College at Cambridge University.

Nicole Kidman who will be giving her final performances tomorrow in Anna Ziegler’s play Photograph 51, where the Oscar-winning actress has been portraying DNA pioneer Rosalind Franklin

Kidman said that when she first read Ziegler’s play, she cried because she felt deeply about what Franklin achieved. Yet Kidman’s portrait of Franklin is without sentimentality.

The actress now embarks on three back-to-back projects: film How To Talk To Girls At Parties and TV dramas Top Of The Lake 2 and Big Little Lies with Reese Witherspoon for HBO.

Further down the road, she hopes to take Photograph 51 to Australia, then to New York and then to make a film version, though the order in which they will happen hasn’t yet been determined.