It can sometimes be difficult for child actors to shed public conceptions of them as a kid, hindering them from being taken seriously in Hollywood as adults.
But at 30, Dakota Fanning is feeling better than ever about her creative voice and agency.
“At this point in my life, I feel very settled in like who I am and what I want and what I don’t want and what I like and what I don’t like,” she said while promoting her latest film, “The Watchers”.
That’s not to say Fanning didn’t receive critical acclaim almost as soon as her career began. She is, after all, the youngest person to receive a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination — she was 7 at the time — in the show’s nearly 30-year history for her performance in “I Am Sam.”
But in the more than two decades since that 2001 breakout role, Fanning has learned a lot about the nature of the business and how to achieve both success and satisfaction in it, something that inspired her to start a production company with her sister and fellow actor, Elle Fanning. “Being an actor for so long, you are reliant on other people to want you to be in their movie, to pick you, to believe in you,” she said of their decision to launch Lewellen Pictures. “Eventually you’re like, ‘Well, I just kind of want to make that happen for myself.’” Fanning has made a lot happen for herself, including earning a degree from New York University despite working consistently since the age of 5. While in school, she studied the portrayal of women in film — something she says she has always been interested in, especially when it comes to female characters who aren’t necessarily “likable.”