she starred in Nicolas Winding Refn’ s The Neon Demon: a dark parable of sex and death and stardom whose surreal dreamscape culminated— rather divisively— in a spectacle of horror-film gore.( Dakota Fanning says she was so rattled watching her sister seem to suffer torment at the movie’ s climax that she almost fled the theater. When the lights came up, she was amazed:“ I was so moved by her as an actor.”) In The Beguiled, Fanning has another outré role— at least by the measure of Civil War mores.“ It’ s seductive in that I show my collarbone,” she says.“ Like, Oh! Her ankle is out.”
Such roles have brought on lots of long-faced-press questions about growing within her craft, maturing as an actress, and the artist she aspires to be. She finds this line of inquiry bizarre.
“ Obviously, people watch you grow up onscreen,” she says, taking a sip of Diet Coke. To her, moviemaking is the easy part: the constant and familiar churn. She doesn’ t understand why people ask so little about what is truly strange and new about getting older. Parties, for example. Graduation. Figuring out what kind of woman you are going to be.
“ You have responsibilities at eighteen that you didn’ t have before, but you still feel like a little kid,” she says. Until Dakota went off to NYU, the sisters, their parents, and their grandmother all lived together in L. A., and the Fannings have an extended family of, as Elle puts it,“ girls, girls, girls!” She thinks a lot about the women around her and the standards that they’ ve set. Around the time of her high school graduation, she realized that she shouldn’ t coast mindlessly into an acting career and weighed other options, including college. But the choice, she says, was easy in the end:“ It’ s scary to think of not being able to do movies still.”
Fanning has a vivid, cinematic inner life: One of her favorite pastimes, she tells me, is sitting on her bed and letting her imagination run. When she goes to sleep, she has clear, lucid dreams that dredge up buried memories and sometimes, she thinks, let her see the future. There was the time in fourth grade when she and three of her friends made plans to see Twilight at the Grove, in L. A. She could scarcely wait. She had a crush on a particular boy at school( a fifth-grader— you know how it is), and when she went to bed the night before the movie, she dreamed about rounding a corner in the Grove and seeing him there.“ I woke up that day and told my friends,‘ We’ re going to see him! I just know we’ re going to see him.’ They’ re like,‘ He doesn’ t even live close by.’” But in fact her crush did appear at the Grove that day— right in the spot where Fanning had dreamed he would be.“ I’ m like a witch!” she exclaims delightedly.
This all seems a swell prelude to our haunted tour. I’ m even a little spooked, and probably look it.“ If I dream about you tonight,” Fanning says with a reassuring laugh,“ I’ ll let you know tomorrow.”
On the north corner of Jackson Square, we meet Michael Bill, a“ paranormal investigator” sent by Ghost City Tours. En route to the Quarter, I had realized that I had no mental image of what a ghost-tour guide looks like, but when we spot him, it is clear that Bill could not be anything else.
“ I’ m superromantic,” she says— and then, as if worried I didn’ t hear, throws out her arms and shouts it:“ Superromantic!”
Gray-bearded and tanned, he wears white jeans with kneehigh lace-up boots, a button-down shirt printed with Star Wars logos, and two huge silver crosses around his neck. Strapped to one thigh he has a pack in which he keeps some spirit sensors, and on his back he wears a bulky JanSport filled with other vitals of the trade.
“ We’ ll use the Ovilus, and I have a couple of spirit boxes, and we’ ll see what happens,” he explains. His voice is like a plucked banjo; his chestnut hair is parted on one side. We wander to a nearby corner and a stately old French Quarter eatery.
“ This is Muriel’ s,” Bill explains.“ It’ s a good restaurant. It’ s also haunted.” The ghost is Pierre Jourdan, who, in the late eighteenth century, lost the deed in a heated poker game and hanged himself. Up a winding staircase to the second floor, a plush room has been lit in soft red light. We sit, and Bill takes out his Ovilus, a device that turns spiritual energy into En glish words. It looks like a baby monitor.“ Is it true that this place is haunted?” he asks.
Fanning is scrutinizing the screen of the device when it delivers its reply.“ Definitely,” she says.
On Royal Street a female reveler, probably possessed by spirits of another kind, shouts to Fanning from a car:“ Dear, I like your top!” The Céline top is, in fact, great. With a high neck and an opening around the navel, it’ s a kind of grown-up evening version of the midriff-baring shirts that Fanning wore as a child. But as the car zooms on, Fanning doesn’ t hear“ Dear, I like your top”; she hears“ Dear God, you’ re tall!” She has been self-conscious about her height— a very reasonable five feet nine— ever since she shot up seven inches one year and gained two shoe sizes while shooting Somewhere. And yet her elegant, long form makes it easy to find clothes she loves: Rodarte( fashion’ s own California sisters) and Miu Miu( quirky and fun).“ Rodarte and Miu Miu are like characters in a film,” she explains. Last spring, at Cannes, she got to wear a sumptuous Valentino dress, and that was heaven. She loved to spread the skirt for cameras.“ I was basically just walking around with it flared.”
It’ s dark now, and the tight French Quarter streets are filled with nighttime wanderers. Bill leads us to a building that was formerly a brothel; he says that it was called the House of the Rising Sun. If a john treated the women badly there, the madam would exact revenge. She’ d offer the man a laced drink, served by two ladies. Then two more women would come, and then more.“ The rube would realize he was surrounded by six very pissed-off prostitutes!” he exclaims.“ They would beat him down, slit his throat, take out his wallet, roll him into a pre-dug grave, take out the cash— and the coup de grâce would come when they would throw the empty bottle on top of him and cover him up!” Today, he says, the building is a hotel.
Fanning smiles sweetly.“ So bring, like, a bad boyfriend or something,” she says.
The Fannings were supposed to be a family of athletes, not actors. Dakota and Elle’ s father had been in the minor leagues, their mother played tennis professionally, and an