The five movies Elle Fanning couldn’t live without
One actor who looks like she’s about to have a big year or two is undoubtedly Elle Fanning, sister of Dakota and star of movies like the Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown and the period comedy-drama series The Great, which picked up a host of award nominations over a three-season run.
She’s about to star in the latest instalment in the long-running Predator series, this time it’s Predator: Badlands, out in cinemas this week, which sees Fanning battling enemies alongside a Predator cast out from his clan. It has seen some controversy from the usual comic book types, sweating profusely over the fact that it was only awarded a 12A rating despite being pretty gory stuff.
But Fanning won’t be worried about that, or about stepping into a major franchise, a trick she’s also due to repeat in 2026 when she stars in the latest Hunger Games movie, Sunrise on the Reaping, which acts as a prequel set 24 years before the first film.
Fanning has starred in all manner of films over the last 20 years, from JJ Abrams’ Super 8 to Disney’s Maleficent to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button as a youngster. But which movies does she like the best? She picked five for the AV Club, including some stone-cold classics.
She led off with the 1971 black comedy Harold and Maude, directed by Hal Ashby, the story of a young man obsessed with death and going against the wishes of his overly eager mother, and followed it up with 1999’s The Virgin Suicides starring Kirsten Dunst
Of that latter movie, she said: “It was like a coming of age thing for me, when I was younger, it was kind of sexy and new.”
Her next pick was a Coen brothers masterpiece from 2007, No Country for Old Men – “I really like that” – which she followed up with Al Pacino’s seminal gangster movie Scarface from 1983, directed by Brian De Palma.
Fanning rounded her selection off with Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction from 1994 before admitting, “I’m not sure if that’s the top five, but those are (definitely) five films I like.”
To be fair to Fanning, she has flip-flopped on this topic over the years to some degree; more recently, she updated some of her favourites to include Denis Villeneuve’s brilliant sci-fi Arrival with Amy Adams, admitting to Letterboxd: “That’s the movie that I cry at, like without a doubt I’m sobbing.”
She’s also a massive fan of Pixar movies, including what she calls a “curveball” in the form of Monsters University, the follow-up to Monsters Inc that many thought fell below the animation studios’ usually high standards, but that Fanning calls: “The best prequel sequel ever made”. She also likes the Ben Stiller comedy There’s Something About Mary a great deal.
Aside from her two monster franchises, Fanning will be starring in a new movie with Nicole Kidman and Nick Offerman called Margot’s Got Money Troubles about a struggling mum who turns to OnlyFans for some extra cash, plus a film with her sister Dakota called The Nightingale, based on a novel published in 2015.
If that weren’t enough, there’s also a film called Rosebush Pruning on the way that stars Pamela Anderson and Fanning in a family drama about living with a genetic illness. Sounds cheery!
Elle Fanning’s five favourite movies:
- Harold & Maude (1971, Hal Ashby)
- The Virgin Suicides (1999, Sofia Copolla)
- Scarface (1983, Brian De Palma)
- Pulp Fiction (1994, Quentin Tarantino)
- No Country for Old Men (2007, Coen Brothers)
