Elle Fanning’s four favourite movies
Some people get into acting in their early 20s, while others start in their teens. Not Elle Fanning. She made her movie debut at the age of three. This wasn’t a one-off, either. She continued to appear in films as an infant, often opposite her sister Dakota. The Fannings provided the voices of the two Kusakabe sisters in the English dub of the Studio Ghibli film My Neighbour Totoro, which set them up for an entire lifetime of appreciation from the weebs.
Growing up in the spotlight can be harsh, as Fanning knows all too well, but she has managed to navigate the mire with remarkable skill. As an adult, she’s appeared in Woody Allen’s A Rainy Day in New York and the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. The near future will also see her join the Predator and Hunger Games franchises, so expect to see a lot more of her going forward.
Having been in the film industry for pretty much her entire life, Fanning is uniquely placed to talk about cinema. This might be why Letterboxd were so keen to get her ‘Four Favourites’ at the A Complete Unknown premiere. As with most of the celebrities they corner in their relentless demand for content, the young performer was absolutely bricking it. “When I go to sleep at night, I think about this,” she confessed. “Now that I’m here, I’m blanking”. Thankfully, she was able to compose herself, and the favourite films were released into the world.
“I have to say [The] Virgin Suicides, That’s my number one,” she noted. Sofia Coppola’s story of five sisters and their various romantic entanglements is a favourite of many, regularly appearing in lists of the best ‘coming-of-age’ movies ever made. For Fanning, however, her love for the film runs even deeper. “That used to be my Instagram handle,” she revealed, “I had ‘Virgin Suicides’ for a long time, and I gave it up. In high school, that was me”.
Her picks continued with Arrival, Denis Villeneuve’s game-changing sci-fi visual treat in which Amy Adams plays a linguist attempting to communicate with a group of aliens who have landed on Earth. “That’s the movie that I cry at,” Fanning admitted, “like, without a doubt, I’m sobbing”. Next up came, in the star’s own words, a ‘curveball’: Monsters University. The follow-up to Pixar’s near-sacral Monsters Inc., Fanning called it “the best prequel sequel ever made”. The film takes place before the events of the original, when protagonists Sully and Mike were still college students.
Then came the inevitable period of self-doubt that comes with any Letterboxd challenge. “I’m just gonna do what my heart says,” Fanning said, after an exasperating period of reflection. “I don’t know, I guess it’s There’s Something About Mary”. We’re not sure why she spent so long deliberating this one—the Farrelly brothers’ romantic comedy is widely considered a classic. Even if most people only know it for that scene.
What’s interesting about this list is that there’s nothing on from before the late 1990s. Fanning seems to prefer movies that came out after she started in the industry or just before it. When you’ve been busy making films since the age of three, there must not be a lot of time to go back and catch up on the classics.
Elle Fanning’s four favourite films:
- The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola,1999)
- Arrival (Denis Villeneuve, 2016)
- Monsters University (Dan Scanlon, 2013)
- There’s Something About Mary (Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly, 1999)
