The one role Dakota Fanning instantly knew she needed to play: “I was like, ‘Yes!'”
Having a younger sibling can be incredibly annoying, if they aren’t stealing your stuff and trying to get you in trouble with your parents, then they’re doing some weird kind of hero worship and copying everything you do. That might not be the case with Dakota Fanning and her younger sister Elle, though, given they’re about to do their first movie together.
Not only are they going to co-star in The Nightingale, an upcoming war drama adapted from a 2015 book by Kristin Hannah, but they’ll also play sisters in the film, which is scheduled to hit cinemas in early 2027. Elle, for her part, has said she hopes Dakota won’t boss her around too much, while the elder Fanning says she hopes her sister won’t annoy her constantly, which all sounds about right, really.
Dakota has had a successful few years after focusing on TV work rather than individual films; after all, she has been appearing in major movies since the early 2000s and her acclaim as a child actor in movies like Tom Cruise’s War of the Worlds. It was actually TV in which she first started appearing, however, as young as five in shows like E.R., Ally McBeal and Spin City.
But it was undoubtedly the Steven Spielberg-directed blockbuster that saw her shoot to fame in 2005 as Cruise’s kid, an old head on young shoulders as he tried to navigate America being invaded by 100-foot-high aliens with tentacles (again). Over the following ten years or so, she worked consistently in movies, while not quite hitting the billion-dollar heights of that film.
By the end of the 2010s, now as an adult actor, she was down to some smaller roles in bigger movies, appearing in the not very well received Ocean’s Eight and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood before she landed a lead role in The Alienist, a period crime drama TV show that did well over two seasons and reminded the industry what she was all about.
Another sizable role in Netflix’s The First Lady followed, before she was cast in a suspense drama for the streaming giant called The Perfect Couple, alongside Nicole Kidman. Recalling the process that led her to accepting, she told Gold Derby: “The first thing they said was, ‘You’re Nicole’s daughter-in-law, you’re pregnant, and you’re the murderer,’ and I was like, ‘Yes!'”
It seems like her admiration for Kidman was the deciding factor in her agreeing to take the project on, an adaptation of a 2018 best-selling novel, that also starred Bono’s daughter, Eve Hewson. On Kidman, Fanning added: “She’s such an icon. She is one of a kind, and she continues to push her own limits and boundaries. She is constantly stretching herself into new characters and space.”
In the end, The Perfect Couple was a moderate hit, mostly with audiences who clamoured for a second season despite the first run bringing the characters’ story arc to a natural conclusion. They have now got their wish, with a second series of the show said to be in development.
Fanning, meanwhile, aside from the film with her sister, is also involved in an upcoming TV series about Bill Clinton’s wife, Hillary, titled Rodham, and will also appear alongside Pamela Anderson in a film called Alma about the warring family of a dead archaeologist.
