ou can tell the story of Elle Fanning through the
things she does, but also through the things she does not do.
Fanning would rather not sit still, for instance. She does not
tweet. She does not learn her lines until the night before she
shoots them (then she memorizes them in the bath) and does
not watch her own talk-show appearances (“It’s like hearing
your voice on an answering machine”). She does not ap-
preciate it when the paparazzi trail her to the gym, because
she thinks she’s not famous enough to merit the commotion.
(“The rest of the world is like, ‘Who is that person?’ I’m like,
‘I’m sorry!’ ”) When people now stop Fanning on the street
(“Are you——”), she tries not to reply, “Dakota Fanning’s
sister!” Fanning, then, would not be the first
person—and might actually be the last—to
realize what a rare and even spooky star Fan-
ning, at nineteen, has become.
It’s not only the regal beauty—arching
eyebrows, snub nose, and a sylphic whoosh
of hair—or the growing catalog of impres-
sive work. When I meet Fanning one eve-
ning at Tableau, a high-ceilinged restaurant
in New Orleans’s French Quarter, what is
striking is the outward flexure of her confi-
dence, the way she knows just who she is and
wants to pass along such certainty to you.
“Hi!” she says, and throws her arms
around me in a big squelch of a hug. She’s
dressed in an elegant red Céline turtleneck
top, black Balenciaga rockabilly denim, and
Maison Margiela sneakers with sparkling
buckles. She doffs her tiny Gucci purse and slides into a chair
by French doors that open out onto the street. Fanning lived
in New Orleans for weeks while shooting Sofia Coppola’s
new movie, The Beguiled, with Kirsten Dunst, Colin Farrell,
and Nicole Kidman. It was seven years after she had filmed
Somewhere for Coppola and the first time she’d flown off
alone to shoot without a family member on hand.
We’ve met for drinks (a lemonade, a Diet Coke—“a lot
of ice,” she says) before embarking on a haunted tour of the
French Quarter, something Fanning has always wanted to
do. As an errand, it’s appropriately eerie. Coppola’s adapta-
tion of The Beguiled (originally a 1966 novel by Thomas P.
Cullinan and, later, a 1971 film starring Clint Eastwood), is
the Civil War–era story of a wounded Union soldier (Farrell)
taken in by a girls’ boarding school in Virginia and subjected
to a gantlet of hospitality, temptation, and horror. Fanning
plays Alicia, an aspiring seductress; early in the film, she
steals into the soldier’s chamber and, as he sleeps, plants on
him a bold To Catch a Thief–style kiss.
“Elle is so sweet, and a kid, and to have her play this role
where she’s kind of like the slutty, mischievous one, very vain
and kind of a bad girl—that’s the opposite of her personal-
ity,” Coppola says. “I thought that was really fun.”
“Sofia was so excited about making me the bad girl!”
Fanning says. But the idea had appeal for her, too. After
she finished 20th Century Women, Mike Mills’s tribute to
women of three generations finding their way through
the drifting, abeyant seventies, she had her star chart read
for the first time (Mills’s wrap gift to her). “I am a person
of huge contradictions, apparently,” she says. “Opposite,
opposite, opposite.” On the one hand, there’s her Pisces
side: “very girly,” otherworldly, uncanny in talent. “I’m not
sure I’ve ever worked with an actress who seems to operate
from such a place of deep instinct as Elle,” Colin Farrell
says. Nicole Kidman speaks of her ease and grace: “Her
work feels effortless.” Many young people know Fanning
best as Sleeping Beauty in Maleficent, a role she adored.
And although she was born in Decatur, Georgia, and
spent her first couple of years in nearby Conyers, she is, to
fans, the ultimate L.A. child: effortlessly stylish, enamel-
cheeked, a Hollywood princess. She has acted since she
was two, and has lived her life both on and for the screen.
Fanning had her very first kiss on-camera, in Ginger &
Rosa—and they used that take.
Yet there’s another side to Fanning (her
Aries side, according to the star chart) that
few people see, although she wishes more
would. She has a huge temper. “My mom
and my sister are always like, ‘That’s not
something you brag about,’ ” she says with
a laugh. “But I tell strangers—I’m also very
trusting of people—like, ‘I get so mad!’ ”
This is the Elle Fanning who takes no guff,
who knows what she wants, who has started
boxing to stay fit at the LA Fitness near her
parents’ house, where she still lives, and has
developed a brutal left hook. It’s the Elle Fan-
ning who criticizes her own table manners (“I
eat like a dude”) and who marches to her own
beat with a gawky, Diane Keaton–like stride.
Often she introduces her ideas archly—“I
must say”—or tacks an incredulous “—yeah!” on the end of
a sentence, meaning, Gosh, what a world. “Elle has this funny
way of speaking, these old-lady phrases,” says Kirsten Dunst,
with whom she developed a close friendship while shooting
The Beguiled. In the years when both Fanning sisters were
working as minors, Elle’s grandmother was her usual com-
panion on set; Elle sometimes has the waggish voice and
vantage of another time.
That Fanning has a taste for professional adventurousness.
She stunned some people last year, when, newly eighteen,
“I am a
person of huge
contradictions,
apparently,”
says Fanning,
who recently
had her star chart
read. “Opposite,
opposite,
opposite”
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