Everything About The Girl

The child star all grown up, Dakota Fanning reverses roles to play a mother, and shows us the lighter side of her dark movies.

- Lina Esa

It’s not always easy to see Dakota as the 23-year-old she is now — it’s almost as though she stepped through a time warp and ended up here. Starting her acting career at five as a rosy-cheeked child, we pretty much grew up with her. The heart-rending tale of I Am Sam (2001) where she played the child of a mentally-handicapped man (Sean Penn), fighting for her custody, has stayed with us as long as the haunting kidnapping tale of Man On Fire (2004), with Denzel Washington as her bodyguard.

Fast forward to now, and Dakota is working while studying, fittingly, the role of women in film. Settling into the Big Apple was easy enough, and she takes on her new, more confronting roles while juggling student life. The transition, thankfully, was smooth: “It’s a very busy, hectic city. I’m lucky, all my friends from school when I was younger moved to New York.”

Adulthood meant really shaking off her child star persona, and taking on darker projects. It started last year in Brimstone which was a twisted period piece that bended genres, with Dakota as a mute mother trying to save her family from the forces of evil. If it wasn’t a sign of the times, Dakota knew exactly how to treat her child co-star. “I really benefited from the actors that I worked with when I was younger, treating me as an equal to them and not babying me,” she said.