Hold the front page! Marilyn Monroe is Dakota Johnson’s ninth cousin three times removed
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- MyHeritage revealed that Marilyn Monroe is Dakota Johnson's ninth cousin three times removed, with shared ancestry tracing back to 17th-century English settlers Richard and Charity Tydings in Maryland; Monroe descends from daughter Pretitia while Johnson descends from her younger sister Mary.
- Maggie Gyllenhaal wrote and directed the short film "Flesh Impact," premiering at the Venice Film Festival to mark Monroe's 100th birthday, with Ellen Burstyn playing an unseen version of Monroe and Dakota Johnson playing Monroe in her prime.
- Benedict Cumberbatch was separately identified by Ancestry as Richard III's second cousin 16 times removed, Arthur Conan Doyle's 16th cousin twice removed, and Alan Turing's 17th cousin, while also being a descendant of an enslaver named Abraham who ran a Barbados sugar plantation.
- Taylor Swift was found to be Emily Dickinson's sixth cousin three times removed — a revelation landing one month after Swift announced her album "The Tortured Poets Department" — and the eighth cousin 11 times removed of King Louis XIV.
- Robert Pattinson was linked by Ancestry to Vlad III (Vlad the Impaler/Dracula) shortly before the release of "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse," placing him alongside Prince William, Prince Harry, and George W Bush as relatives of the medieval ruler.
Why it matters: The Monroe-Johnson tie is the latest in a pattern of genealogy firms (Ancestry, MyHeritage, Famouskin) announcing celebrity-relative findings timed to major film and album releases — the article's running joke that Ancestry keeps conveniently uncovering these links near launch dates suggests PR coordination rather than organic discovery.
