guardian "I think it's all in the way Ol avoids the obvious," Fanning, 18, decides. Sitting on a plump hotel sofa in a black skirt, cream blouse and black bow tie, she resembles a spiffy doll; when special emphasis is required, she brushes aside her platinum hair and widens the lamplight eyes that have earned her comparisons with Bette Davis. "Even though the movie's sad at times, Ol doesn't push you to cry. When you leave, you're upset, and at the same time it makes you want to make your life madder." What she actually says is "matter", but her Southern accent (she was raised in Georgia) gives the consonants a bouncy twang.
Fanning's bristling performance, complete with clipped English accent, is the most chastening of the film's surprises. It's not that she hasn't already been exceptional in her career, which began with a washing powder commercial at the age of five before taking in sitcoms, voice acting (My Neighbour Totoro, Coraline) and blockbusters (Spielberg'sWar of the Worlds, the Twilight series). But the mere phrase "child star" brings with it potentially unhelpful connotations for a low-budget British film predicated on confronting the realities that Love Story left out.
Parker was surprised when he heard she was interested. "I got the message that Dakota wanted to meet urgently, and that she intended to beat out anyone else who wanted the part. I thought, 'OK, it wasn't how I envisaged it, but let's see.' Within a minute of meeting her I was thinking, 'Oh God, you'd be fantastic.' She's genuinely remarkable. One of the things I loved is that she doesn't ask you to like her. She's a right cow for the first 45 minutes of the film. So when the gates start to open, it's paradoxically more moving." (..)
"Every part would usually mean moving to a different state. But each time my mum would ask me: 'Are you sure you want to do this?' and I'd be, like, 'Sure!' Even if I said now that I didn't want to do it any more, that would be totally fine with everyone." In the corner of the room sits Fanning's manager, a petite, smiling woman, conspicuous suddenly in her silence.
Parker credits Fanning with bringing a positive atmosphere to the set of Now Is Good. "She stayed in the same crappy places as the rest of us and mucked in and was fine about basically taking no money so what we had could go on the film. I've never heard of anyone else who gives presents to every member of the cast and crew, and sends handwritten letters at the end of the shoot to every head of department, telling them what they meant to her and thanking them for some specific thing."
Indeed, even a quick-fire word-association game about her fellow stars scores a disappointing zero on the bitch-o-meter.
Presented with the name "Tom Cruise", she responds with "exciting". Kristen Stewart is "bestie". Robert De Niro (who terrorised her on screen in Hide and Seek) is "sweet", Robert Pattinson "funny", Penn "dedicated", Denzel Washington "strong". Spielberg earns the most effusive praise: "Mentor. Best of the best." She also worked with the late Tony Scott on Man on Fire. "Tony was so motivated about what we were doing, and he made everyone feel the same. I'm devastated, but I'm so pleased I got to know him." Presumably she has seen that violent thriller only recently, having turned 18 this year? "No, I saw it at the time," she trills. "It's just a movie. I knew they were fake fingers that Denzel cut off: I saw them in the makeup trailer."
Any transition for Fanning between child and adult roles was elided or leapfrogged by choices she made a long time ago. Films such as Now Is Good or the recent rock biopic The Runaways have ratified her as a sophisticated performer, but the seeds of that maturity were sown when she played a 12-year-old rape victim in the overheated Southern dramaHounddog. Her disappointment at the media outcry remains vivid.
"I felt that what the media did to me was sort of like what happened to my character," she sighs. "The negative attention made me feel I'd done something wrong for portraying this trauma that millions of people have gone through. I thought about anyone who was reading that stuff, and who had been through that ordeal: they would probably think, 'Well, I'll never tell anyone about what happened to me because this person did it in a movie and they're saying she's a bad person. ' But the point of the movie is that she thinks she's responsible. This is what victims can feel. I hope it didn't stifle anyone, because Hounddog is about finding your voice after going through something awful." She bellows in mock, but eloquent, indignation: "This is why we did the movie, damn it!"
There was more controversy last year over an ad campaign she appeared in for the Marc Jacobs fragrance Oh, Lola! The AdvertisingStandards Authority banned the ad after ruling that the image of Fanning brandishing a perfume bottle between her thighs was "irresponsible" and guilty of "sexualising a child" (though Fanning was 17 when the picture was taken). She is dismissive of the uproar. "If you want to see a double meaning, I understand, but at the end of the day it's a perfume bottle."
"I didn't want to take four years off for school," she explains. "I still love life on set. If I explained why, you'd think it sounded awful. 'Oh, we wake up rilly early and work rilly long hours and the lights are rilly hot.' But it's where I feel most comfortable. I'm at home there." More at source
Via @vonch
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