MEDIA > ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS > 2005

DAKOTA NOT TAKEN WITH VEGEMITE
from Herald Sun, July, 2005
by Peter Mitchell
You are just 11 years old when Steven Spielberg presents you with your first video camera. Then Tom Cruise hands you a new iPod with 900 songs he downloaded, along with a new, razor-thin mobile phone that few people own.
You have these gifts because Spielberg and Cruise want to thank you for your performance in their $120 million science-fiction film, War of the Worlds.
Later, when Cruise proposes to Katie Holmes in Paris, you're one of the first people to be told.
A fantasy? Not if you're Dakota Fanning. The cute, bug-eyed girl is no average kid. For starters, she reportedly earns $1 million a movie and has made 18 of them.
That's a lot of money for a kid who only recently grew her front teeth.
Fanning's latest TV venture is also a Spielberg project, the sci-fi series Taken.
"It's been a wonderful project to be a part of. I'm not sure whether I believe in people from outer space, but it maeks for great TV," she says.
Out of the blue, an Australian topic pops up that transforms Fanning back into a giggling kid.
It's Vegemite. Fanning is not a fan. The young Hollywood pro can't come up with nice things to say about the black spread.
"It's awful," she says, screwing up her face as if she'd just eaten a lemon.
Fanning sampled Vegemite while in Melbourne filming a remake of Charlotte's Web. Her Australian hosts persuaded her to sample it one day at breakfast.
"I put a bit on my finger and ate a bit. I didn't like it at all," Fanning says.

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