Dakota Fanning Interview (July 2, 2005)

Hannah Dakota Fanning (born February 23, 1994) is an American actress.[1] She rose to prominence at the age of seven for her performance as Lucy Dawson in the drama film I Am Sam (2001), for which she received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination at the age of eight, making her the youngest nominee in SAG history.[2] Fanning played major roles as a child actress in the films Uptown Girls (2003), The Cat in the Hat (2003), Man on Fire (2004), War of the Worlds (2005), Dreamer (2005), and Charlotte's Web (2006), and the eponymous character in Coraline (2009).

Fanning followed with more mature roles, playing Lewellen in Hounddog (2007), Lily in The Secret Life of Bees (2008), Cherie Currie in The Runaways (2010) and Jane in The Twilight Saga (2009–2012). Throughout the 2010s, she continued appearing in independent productions such as the dramas Now Is Good (2012) and Night Moves (2013), the comedy-drama Very Good Girls (2013), and the biographical film Effie Gray (2014). In 2018, she appeared in the heist comedy Ocean's 8 and had a starring role in the period drama series The Alienist. She has since portrayed Manson girl Squeaky Fromme in the Quentin Tarantino film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) and First Daughter Susan Ford in the Showtime biographical drama series The First Lady (2022).

Fanning was born in Conyers, Georgia. She attended a Montessori School in Covington. Her mother, Heather Joy (née Arrington), played tennis professionally, and her father, Steven J. Fanning, played minor league baseball and later worked as an electronics salesman in Los Angeles, California.[3] Her maternal grandfather is former American football player Rick Arrington, and her aunt is former ESPN reporter Jill Arrington.[4] Counted among the Arrington family's notable ancestors is the gentleman farmer William Farrar.[5] Fanning is the elder sister of actress Elle Fanning; they were brought up as Southern Baptists.[6]

Acting career[edit source]
1999–2003[edit source]
When Fanning was a small child, she was an actress at the Towne Lake Arts Center in Woodstock, Georgia, starring in small plays. In 1999, at the age of five, she began her professional acting career, appearing in a Tide television commercial. Her first significant acting job was a guest role in the NBC prime-time drama ER, which remains one of her favorite roles:

I played a car accident victim who has leukemia. I got to wear a neck brace and nose tubes for the two days I worked.[7]
Fanning subsequently had several guest roles on television series, including CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The Practice, and Spin City. She also portrayed the title characters of Ally McBeal and The Ellen Show as young girls.

In 2001, Fanning was chosen to star opposite Sean Penn in the movie I Am Sam, the story of a mentally challenged man who fights for the custody of his daughter (played by Fanning). Her role in the film made Fanning the youngest person ever to be nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award, being seven years of age at the time.[8] She also won the Best Young Actor/Actress award from the Broadcast Film Critics Association for her performance.[9] Fanning's performance would later be incorporated into the music video for Rufus Wainwright's cover of the Beatles' "Across the Universe"; the song itself was included in I Am Sam.[10][11]

In 2002, director Steven Spielberg cast Fanning in the lead child role of Allison "Allie" Clarke/Keys in the science fiction miniseries Taken. By this time, she had received positive notices from several film critics, including Tom Shales of The Washington Post, who wrote that Fanning "has the perfect sort of otherworldly look about her, an enchanting young actress called upon ... to carry a great weight."[12]

In the same year, Fanning appeared in three films: as a kidnap victim who proves to be more than her abductors bargained for in Trapped, as the young version of Reese Witherspoon's character in Sweet Home Alabama, and as Katie in the movie Hansel and Gretel.

A year later, she starred in two prominent films: playing the uptight child to an immature nanny played by Brittany Murphy in Uptown Girls, and as Sally in The Cat in the Hat. In addition, Fanning did voice-over work for four animated projects during this period, including voicing Satsuki in Disney's English language release of My Neighbor Totoro, a little girl in the Fox series Family Guy, and a young Wonder Woman in the episode "Kids Stuff" from Cartoon Network's Justice League Unlimited.

2004–2007
In 2004, Fanning appeared in Man on Fire as Pita, a nine-year-old who wins over the heart of a retired mercenary (Denzel Washington) hired to protect her from kidnappers. Roger Ebert wrote that Fanning "is a pro at only ten years old, and creates a heart-winning character."[13] In 2004, she made an appearance on season ten of the television series Friends, playing the role of Mackenzie, a young girl who is moving out of the house Monica and Chandler are buying.