Dakota Johnson says her grandmother Tippi Hedren still has about a dozen lions

If you haven’t seen the 1981 film Roar, you now know what to do with your next one hour and 42 minutes of isolation time. The bonkers Noel Marshall-directed movie stars his wife Tippi Hedren (best-known for her role in Hitchcock's The Birds), her daughter Melanie Griffith, and a LOT of on-the-loose lions. And while Roar came out nearly 40 years ago, Hedren’s granddaughter Dakota Johnson says that the 90-year-old star still keeps some big cats around to this day.Johnson was a recent virtual guest on Graham Norton’s chat show when the topic of lions came up (because really in a Tiger King world, how could it not). “She has 13 or 14,” said Johnson, mentally tallying Hedren’s current cat count. “There used to be like 60 cats, and now there’s just a couple. By the time I was born they were all in huge compounds and it was a lot safer,” she added after Norton shared a photo of a lion lounging poolside with Johnson’s mother's leg in its open mouth. “It wasn’t as totally psycho as it was when they first started.” Billed as “a ferocious comedy” Roar saw Hedren, Griffith and Marshall’s two sons trapped in a Tanzanian big cat reserve that has been taken over by the wildlife itself. It’s a fairly wild concept for a movie (made today, the animals would have been CG; in 1981, they weren’t) but the story of how the family went about filming the project is even more zany. (Check out this making-of doc on Crave for even more behind-the-scenes intel.) Hedren, a lifelong animal lover, rescued young lions from zoos and circuses and began keeping them in her California home. One lion, Neal, had the run of the place and would often sleep in Griffith's bedroom.

 

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We can do this! We have all been through dangerous times but nothing like this virus. Stay home, be safe. FaceTime and CALL your friends and loved ones. #socialdistancing #love #readbooks #meditate ♥️❌⭕️♥️

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When the authorities found out, the couple moved the animals to a purpose-built set for Roar in a more remote area of the state. By the time filming began, Marshall and Hedren had 71 lions, 26 tigers, a tigon (or liger if you prefer), nine black panthers, 10 cougars, two jaguars, four leopards and two elephants. These days Hedren keeps only a little over a dozen big cats—a reasonable number for a nonagenarian—and has since admitted that previously letting the animals have the run of her home was “stupid beyond belief.”[video_embed id='1962494']RELATED: Here’s how Dakota Johnson is dealing with depression in quarantine[/video_embed]It doesn't seem that Dakota shares her grandmother's affinity for exotic animals and is sticking to acting, directing and prioritizing her mental health as the world heads into the third month of quarantine, instead.[video_embed id='-1']RELATED: Sleepy lion cub purrs happily as he gets petted[/video_embed]