Dakota Johnson chosen to co-direct Coldplay music video after beating other filmmaker's ideas

Dakota Johnson says she was competing with other filmmakers when she was chosen to direct a Coldplay video. Photo / Getty Images

Dakota Johnson insisted she didn't get any preferential treatment when she was chosen to co-direct a Coldplay video.

The 30-year-old actress is dating the group's frontman Chris Martin but she still had to pitch her proposal for their Cry Cry Cry promo alongside other filmmakers.

She said: "I wrote the story and pitched it to the band like every other director did, and they chose mine - not because they're partial to me at all."

Dakota considered "every single detail" in the video, including the amount of confetti that fell and the laces in the dancers' shoes because her work often consumes her.

She told the Summer issue of America's Marie Claire magazine: "When I work, I'm constantly thinking about the job. It takes up so much of my brain.

"Not all of my projects are only good messages, but all of them have a little bit of something that makes me feel like it's an okay thing to pour my heart into."

The Suspiria star is also "constantly thinking" about the state of the world and admitted she has a "lot of therapy" to help calm her thoughts and emotions.

She said: "I feel the most insane anxiety about our world and our planet.

"I'm constantly thinking about the state of the world right now. It keeps me up at night, all night, every night. My brain goes to crazy dark places with it.

"My brain moves at a million miles per minute. I have to do a lot of work to purge thoughts and emotions, and I am in a lot of therapy."

Johnson, who starred in Fifty Shades of Grey, has battled with her mental health for a number of years but she is now trying to find the "beautiful" in her struggles.

She said: "I've struggled with depression since I was young - since I was 15 or 14. That was when, with the help of professionals, I was like, 'Oh, this is a thing I can fall into.'

"But I've learned to find it beautiful because I feel the world. I guess I have a lot of complexities, but they don't pour out of me. I don't make it anyone else's problem."