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CHILD ACTRESS WORLDLY WISE AT 11
from The Journal Gazette, October 14, 2005
by Steve Penhollow
INDIANAPOLIS – Dakota Fanning has often been described as an old soul, which is a way of explaining how a person who hasn't been in the world very long can seem so worldly wise.
This is a treacherous compliment in a sense because it portrays the person to whom it is paid as something rare and perhaps a little unnatural.
Fanning, 11, has starred in a dozen films in her nearly half-dozen years in the movie business, and she has rarely failed to astound and confound colleagues and moviegoers alike with her ability to inhabit varied characters and convey delicate emotions.
Fanning was in Indianapolis on Thursday for the launch of the 2005 Heartland Film Festival, which runs through Oct. 21.
Fanning's latest project, “Dreamer,” opened the festival. It is a family film about an injured horse, an injured family and the ways the healing of both intersect. It comes to theaters nationwide Oct. 21.
In person, Fanning is – thankfully – all girl.
In a chilly room of a venerable downtown hotel, Fanning leaned on two throw pillows and used her own jean jacket as a blanket.
At one point, her agent offered her a tissue and she declined saying, “My nose isn't runny. It's just stuffed.”
She is as giggly and springy and as encumbered with braces as any preteen, even if she keeps some pretty glitzy company.
Fanning has held her own on screen with (and even stolen a few scenes from) the biggest and the best in the business: Sean Penn (“I Am Sam”), Denzel Washington (“Man On Fire”), Robert DeNiro (“Hide and Seek”) and Tom Cruise (“War of the Worlds”) among them.
Fanning said she is in awe of such people but rarely gets intimidated by them, and the key to understanding how such a thing could be possible is to see Fanning not as preternaturally wise but guilelessly gifted. Fanning does amazing things because no one has ever told her she can't do them.
The reporter had the pleasure of informing Fanning that Jodie Foster cited her as one of her favorite actresses in a recent interview, and Fanning's reaction was gratifyingly unguarded: “That's insane!” she said.
It seems absurd to ask such a girl about her acting method, but it is unavoidable when the actor is someone as habitually mesmerizing as Fanning. But Fanning, who plays country girls in “Dreamer” and the forthcoming adaptation of “Charlotte's Web,” isn't one to overprepare or overthink.
“Well, if you have a real farm and a real barn, it sort of comes easily after that,” she said.
What acting is for Fanning is immense fun: She talks about it with an enthusiasm that other kids bring to discussions of Disney World vacations. Fanning is such a charming kid that it's easy to believe her when she cites the names of Hollywood royalty as frequent cell-phone chat buddies.
She says her “Dreamer” co-star Kurt Russell will “be in her life always.”
Fanning likes to tell a story about the first time she met Russell. She and the film's director, John Gatins, went to pick up Russell at the airport and, whether it was attributable to the sunglasses he was wearing or some other mitigating factor, Russell almost walked right past them.
“I'm like, ‘Hello?' ” Fanning recalled. “He almost bumped right into us. I was like, ‘Are you awake?' ”
Unlike Russell, a longtime equestrian, Fanning knew nothing about horses before she started “Dreamer.” Now she owns one: Russell's birthday gift to her was a palomino quarter horse that she named Goldie.
Asked whether Goldie is a manly enough name for a stallion, Fanning replied: “He's got blondish hair! I guess I could have named him Kurt. But that wouldn't have sounded right: ‘Here, Kurt! Here, Kurt!' ”
Fanning actually filmed “Dreamer” before “War of the Worlds,” Hollywood being the sort of place where a low-budget film takes longer to get into theaters than a big-budget film because a low-budget film is harder to market.
Big-budget films these days tend to require actors to react to things that will be added later by computer technicians. But Fanning said director Steven Spielberg, no slouch in the state-of-the-art department, was able to show his actors rough effects sequences while they were shooting the human stuff. And she was able to torment them with her blood-curdling, alien-induced screams, which she tended to tear into whether the camera was rolling or not (until everyone begged her to stop).
In spite of the fantastic nature of the subject matter, Spielberg and Cruise made it easy for Fanning to believe in the reality of what was fictionally unfolding.
“It's impossible not to feel comfortable around Tom,” she said. “The first time I met him he was like, ‘How are you doing? How about that weather, huh?' ”
How about this weather, the reporter asked. It was an unseasonably warm Thursday in Indianapolis, and Fanning, a native Georgian and transplanted Californian shivering in a cold hotel room, couldn't wait to get out into it.
Fanning said she was looking forward to the evening's screening, mainly because she'd attended four others and was amused at the way people had behaved. Viewers get so engrossed in the racing scenes, Fanning said, that they tend to do a little sympathetic riding in their seats.
Like any 11-year-old, she jumped up and demonstrated – giggling the whole time.

More information about the Heartland Film Festival can be found at www.heartlandfilm festival.org/2005/.

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