How the “two most stressful days” of Dakota Fanning’s career ended in “euphoria”
Beginning her career at five in the late 1990s, Dakota Fanning has now been a professional actor for well over three-quarters of her life, consistently finding work in all quarters of the entertainment industry.
From lending her voice to English dubs of Studio Ghibli classics to picking up award nominations across the board for her role in Ripley, she has already amassed a ridiculously impressive CV, showing no signs of slowing down in her onscreen exploits, and then in 2018, she took an exciting new step behind the camera to direct a short film called Hello Apartment.
A simple film that only runs to about ten minutes, inspired by the first apartment that Fanning lived in on her own, it follows a woman called Ava, played by Eve Hewson, as she moves into a new flat in Brooklyn, her life playing out in front of us, with her ups and downs, loves and losses all unfolding to offer us a slice of a life.
Fanning detailed her debut directing experience to Who What Wear, revealing that despite spending most of her life on film sets, directing was a whole different ball game. At this point in time, acting was like a muscle memory, so taking on this new challenge was not easy.
“It was the most stressful two days of my life,” she recalled, “When I’m acting, you still have challenging moments, and you have things that you’re nervous for, but deep down, I know I’m going to get to the other side of it… When you’re the director and all the responsibility is falling on you, I didn’t have that muscle to rely on – that muscle that’s supposed to keep me going… I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to do it’.”
Hello Apartment was made as part of ‘Women’s Tales’, an ongoing collection of short films sponsored by Italian fashion house Miu Miu, designed to showcase the creativity of prominent females in cinema, whether they are established directors or otherwise, with the only caveat was that all the characters had to wear Miu Miu clothing.
The series began in 2011 with a movie by Zoe Cassavetes and has gone on to give a number of prominent women a chance to flex their creative muscles, from Lynne Ramsey, Chloë Sevigny to Ava DuVernay and Mati Diop.
Alas, growing up surrounded by some of the most famous actors and directors seemed to have little effect on Fanning’s filmmaking skills, and while there aren’t many professional reviews available of the short, user reviews across various sites do not paint a pretty picture. Hello Apartment currently sits at the equivalent of about 50% on both IMDb and Letterboxd, with a user on the latter, Elizaveta, putting it bluntly, “Dakota, darling, film direction is not for you, sorry”. Ouch.
Ultimately, Fanning doesn’t care; she overcame some serious anxiety to prove to herself and the entire world that she could direct a film and described the result as “euphoria”, so no snarky Letterboxd reviews are ever going to take that away from her.
