Dakota Fanning’s full-circle role: “I wouldn’t be where I am without that experience”
Is it a good thing to become a child star? Tough to say, really. Yes, you get an enormous amount of money in your bank account that sets you up for life.
Yes, that probably allows you to buy pretty much every toy you can think of and be the envy of your mates. But as we’ve seen time and again, being famous as a kid can lead to all kinds of issues as an adult. One actor who seems to have navigated it reasonably well, however, is Dakota Fanning.
She was just six when she appeared alongside Michelle Pfeiffer on the 2001 drama I am Sam, which is barely old enough to watch Bluey, let alone take direction and remember lines while trying to act with Sean Penn. But Fanning nevertheless did a fine job on the film, earning a Screen Actors’ Guild nomination for her performance, the youngest ever nominee.
Her next big movie at the grand old age of eight was with Denzel Washington no less in Man on Fire, which was a big hit and again earned Fanning a huge amount of recognition, including a Critics’ Choice nomination for ‘Best Young Performer’. By now, Fanning was racking up a co-star list to rival any adult actor, and she repeated the trick the following year by lining up with Tom Cruise on the 2005 Steven Spielberg sci-fi blockbuster War of the Worlds.
That one was an even bigger global hit and won the Critics’ Choice award that her previous film had earned her a nomination for. People were really taking notice and talking about her being a generational talent. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was a difficult level of sudden fame and attention for a child to deal with, and although she added Robert De Niro to her roll call the same year with Hide and Seek, a step back was required.
At just 12, she was the youngest ever inductee to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, but made just one film in 2006, the kids’ adventure Charlotte’s Web. Over the next few years, she did voice-over work before popping up in the Twilight series, and then in 2010, she got fine reviews when she teamed up with Kristen Stewart on the music biopic The Runaways.
Over the next decades she worked extensively on fairly low budget movies including a thriller with Jesse Eisenberg called Night Moves, and then when she teamed up with Michelle Pfeiffer on her 2022 movie The First Lady it represented something of a circle closing for Fanning, coming some 20 years after her debut film.
She said at the time: “I turned 27 working with her again after turning seven working with her on the first movie. It is such an ever-present experience in my life because it sort of started my career, and I wouldn’t be where I am today without, you know, that experience and the writer and director, Jessie Nelson.”
This year, Fanning will be seen in a new horror movie called Vicious, which hits Paramount+ in October. It’s the story of a woman who descends into a nightmare after a late-night visitor to her house presents her with a mysterious gift. It’s directed by Bryan Bertino, who wrote and directed the cult 2008 horror The Strangers starring Liv Tyler.
