MEDIA > ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS > 2003

THINGS LOOKIN' UP FOR YOUNG ACTRESS
from Jam Showbizz, August 11, 2003
HOLLYWOOD -- Dakota Fanning is nine going on 29.
That's the impression the composed and precocious actress leaves during interviews for her new comedy-drama Uptown Girls, which co-stars Brittany Murphy. It opens Friday.
Fanning assures reporters that she is, however, still a little girl.
"When I go home, I play with my baby dolls and strollers and stuffed animals, pretend like they're real dogs," insists Fanning, who held her own opposite Sean Penn in 2001's I Am Sam and became the youngest person ever to be nominated for a Screen Actor's Guild Award.
"I do all that stuff. I really do. I think of myself as nine years old. I mean I have my ballet lessons. I have my three best friends that I hang out with. So I just do something that I love to do."
Murphy describes Fanning as a combination free spirit/old soul.
"She loves life, she loves childhood, she is such a kindred free spirit, ball of sunshine, energetic joy," says the 25-year-old actress. "She also has a very old soul and she is extremely wise and so bright, sharp and intelligent. And, as far that's concerned, you can talk with her about anything in the world, and she utilizes all of her wisdom and all of the beautiful morals that her extraordinary family has taught her, in her acting."
Fanning, who grew up in Conyers, Ga., learned to read at age two-and-a-half and nabbed her first commercial -- for Tide -- at age five.
Her younger sister Elle has also joined the Hollywood game. Elle played Dakota's character at a younger age in I Am Sam and starred in the 10-part cable sci-fi mini-series Taken.
"She's done two movies," says Dakota of Elle. "She did Daddy Day Care with Eddie Murphy and she did Door In The Floor with Kim Basinger and Jeff Bridges. I think, she's kind of like me, she just loves doing it and has fun doing it. She loves meeting people. Like she called the sound guy, Mike Microphone. She's hilarious."
Otherwise, acting's not in the family genes.
"My dad was a baseball player and my mom played tennis so they thought we were going to be sports people and we're doing acting. But my sister likes soccer."
Fanning has been taking ballet lessons since she was two and her favourite subject at school is history.
In Uptown Girls, Fanning plays Ray, a germphobic neat-freak from New York's Upper East Side who is saddled with a freewheeling rock-heiress-turned-nanny (Murphy).
The best part, says the youngster, were the twin pigs -- Springer and Softie -- who played Murphy's pet in the film.
"I loved the pigs. I loved them, they were so cute. The only way you could tell them apart was Springer had a freckle on its bottom. A great freckle on its bottom. So every day you had to look at its bottom to see which one it was."
Needless to say, the day Fanning and Murphy shot the scene where they give the pig a bath was a memorable one.

WISH LIST
"There were bubbles completely everywhere. But they were so cute. And they would lick you all the time."
Not that she kept one. Especially after finding out some disturbing diet news.
"They eat bacon," she says with wide eyes. "Yes! They eat bacon."
Next up for Fanning in theatres is the already completed Cat In The Hat opposite Mike Myers.
She's has only a short wish list of people she'd like to work with: Cameron Diaz and Julia Roberts.
"I met Cameron Diaz at the SAG awards for, like, 10 minutes. It was so exciting. And they were telling people to sit down and she really talked to me. It was really nice."
And what about Spielberg?
"I went to the re-release of E.T. It's one of my favorite movies. I love it. It was great. and I went back to l.A., so I met him then. But, he hasn't actually come to the set yet. So, I haven't met him on the set."
At the rate Dakota Fanning is going, she's bound to work with many great talents in Hollywood. Who knows? Maybe she'll even follow in the footsteps of former child actors like Drew Barrymore... who starred in Spielberg's E.T at a tender age.

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