MEDIA > ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS > 2005

IS THE NEW KID ON THE BLOCK EVER GOING TO ACT HER AGE?
from The Herald, July 4, 2005
by Abigail Wild
Unofficial publicity for Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds, although plentiful, has made for an unnerving spectacle. Whatever insightful or rational comments Tom Cruise might have made about his role have been counteracted by his bizarre monkey behaviour on live television and his wild declarations of love for Katie Holmes, his comparatively youthful new fiancée. Then came the antagonism between the film's cautious promoters and the press, who were annoyed by strict review embargoes.
Thank goodness, then, for Dakota Fanning, Cruise's tiny co-star. Spielberg might have his veteran, blockbuster star in Cruise but Dakota is the critic's choice. The 11-year-old, who plays his daughter, Rachel, has found herself consistently praised for her poise and maturity and, above all, for not getting by on cuteness alone.
Not that Dakota is any newcomer. She has worked with Spielberg before on Taken, the TV mini-series, which she narrated. Among many others, she has been nominated for a Critics' Choice Award for best performance in a feature film for Man on Fire, and has won a Golden Satellite Award and a Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Young Actor/Actress for her part in I Am Sam. At one ceremony, she had some trouble saying thank you. She was too short to reach the microphone and had to be held up by Orlando Bloom for the duration of her lengthy acceptance speech.
In her first year of acting, she appeared on TV shows ER, CSI, The Practice, Malcolm in the Middle and Ally McBeal, as a young McBeal. She has worked alongside Kevin Bacon, Michelle Pfeiffer, Charlize Theron, Denzel Washington, Robert De Niro and Sean Penn. There are few who leave the set unimpressed.
Bacon, after working with her in Trapped, said: "Dakota is so there and so really believable in terms of her fear and anxiety. She's phenomenal. I mean, I've seen her do things I've been really astounded with, astounded that a little child can put herself to that place with such confidence and ability."
While interviewers search for evidence of child-star brattishness, actors can only recall their fondness for her.
"Dakota's a combination of Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz and Meryl Streep," said Mike Myers, her co-star in The Cat in The Hat. "She's so sweet you just want to bite her face. Not break the skin – just gnaw."
It shows just how action-packed Dakota's life has been thus far that, even as a little girl, she wanted to be an actor. At three, she was stuffing a blanket up her jumper and pretending she was pregnant. She would then give birth, squealing and wailing. Her sister, Elle, who is embarking on her own acting projects, would play the baby. After being given a playhouse, Dakota used it as a base for making plays – the kind that had to be practised for a whole week.
Having asserted she "wanted to be an actress on television and movies instead of just around the house", Dakota's parents, Joy and Steve Fanning, decided, with the approval of her teachers, to get their daughter an agent and take her to LA for six weeks.
Dakota was given so many parts, the family ended up staying away from the family home in Conyers, Georgia, for months, and then years, before settling permanently.
Actors and directors talk of Dakota having an old soul and an intelligence and sensitivity beyond her years. In the spirit of premature grannyhood, she has knitted scarves for Robert De Niro, Tom Cruise and Denzel Washington.
She is a fan of experienced Hollywood actors such as Julia Roberts and Holly Hunter, rather than the more obvious teen-flick Barbie dolls. She also stays up late to watch shows about comedians of the past, such as Lucille Ball.
It is certainly difficult to believe the wise words she gives in interviews are her own and not rehearsed lines fed to her by her agent and parents. After filming I Am Sam with Penn at the age of six, she said the lesson she hoped everyone would learn from the movie was that "it doesn't matter what car you drive and what apartment or house you live in, or even what you look like on the outside. It just matters what your heart looks like".
Unbelievably, when talking about the rumours spread about celebrities, she quoted Oprah Winfrey's personal proverb, "turn your wounds into wisdom".
That said, this is the same girl who, on finding out she would play Sam's daughter, spent a long time jumping on her bed with glee and giggling down the phone to her grandmother. If she looks like she is inconsolable with grief when she cries on-screen, it is because she is thinking about the death of her goldfish, Flounder.
She likes Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, Nancy Drew books and, in addition to Gone With The Wind and Steel Magnolias – hardly pre-teen choices – she loved The Incredibles, Shrek and Shrek 2.
As always happens when a young star emerges, there is much speculation about how her unusual lifestyle – spending so much time with adults, earning money, sporadic schooling, being famous – will affect her as she grows up. She is already the subject of numerous apocryphal tales. Fansites abound, some claiming Dakota could read when she was two. If she ever reads her own press, she will see herself being described as a "miracle child" who "spreads sunshine wherever she goes". There is much to live up to.
It is perhaps a good thing, then, that the next of Dakota's films to be released will not be heavy thrillers, such as this year's Hide and Seek, the kind of films in which she plays children who experience more than the usual blockbuster-movie children's emotions. She has been working on a re-make of Alice in Wonderland, due for release next year, and has travelled to Australia to play Fern Arable in Charlotte's Web, alongside Robert Redford.
For once, she is playing children for children but it's not like she will have approached the script like a child.
Jeff Woolnough, co-director of Taken, says she is unlike any child he has ever worked with. "She never did anything remotely close to behaviour that you'd expect from an eight-year-old.
She was eight going on 40 . . . I worked with kids before but I never worked with a kid like her. She's amazing."

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