Elle Fanning - 21st Century Woman

At 18 years old, most people are still deciding on a career, but not Elle Fanning. With more than 30 movies under her belt, the teenager is already a Hollywood veteran.

- Huma Humayun

One would assume that anyone who starred in their first film at 18 months old must have some pushy showbiz parents behind them, but it was Fanning’s sister Dakota, four years her senior, who was the driving force behind it all. Their parents were, in fact, both athletes. “They thought that maybe Dakota and I would play tennis, be sporty,” Fanning explains, but the girls had other plans. “We would put on these elaborate, imaginative costumes and be characters. We would play, but we were basically acting with no camera. My mom saw us doing that and she was like, ‘Well, I guess that’s what they want to do…’”

Having caught the acting bug at a play camp aged five, Dakota was soon appearing in commercials and movies, resulting in a permanent move to LA for the whole family. “My mom and dad, it kind of turned their worlds upside down,” says Fanning, “because we lived in a small town in Georgia and had our lives and that was it.” Elle was cast as the younger version of her sister in I am Sam and subsequent films, before starring in her own roles. She was only nine when she landed the lead in Phoebe in Wonderland, portraying a girl with Tourette’s Syndrome, and realised that acting would become her career. “I was actually playing someone where I had to do the research,” she recalls. “I had to meet kids who had Tourette’s. I’d never had that responsibility before and I was good with that responsibility. It didn’t scare me at all.”