Dakota Fanning never expected her nine-year-old self to become a meme, but scroll through TikTok lately and there you’d find her, circa 2003, sassily pronouncing: “Take a look around. Do you see [my mom] anywhere? News-fa-lash. You’re not gonna.” The clip was plucked from Uptown Girls, a film that follows Fanning’s precocious, self-important Ray and her childlike nanny Molly (Brittany Murphy) on a journey toward joint self-discovery. In the scene, Ray is desperately trying to assert control in her life. Online, it’s come to represent feeling hangry, answering a misdial, dealing with imposter syndrome and everything in between. “I love seeing the resurgence of [the film] because I talk to my girlfriends that watched it at the age I was when I filmed it and I think it’s a real comfort for a lot of people who are now adults revisiting it and maybe understanding it in a different way,” Fanning tells me.
The actress is video calling from the tranquil living room of her Los Angeles home. The picture is pleasingly monochromatic—she is dressed in soft layers that perfectly meld with her cream couch; her blond hair pulled back. “I have a very serene house,” she says. “People say that when they walk in, and that’s exactly what I was going for.” It seems like the perfect retreat for someone who hasn’t stopped moving since the age of six, when she starred alongside Sean Penn in the 2001 film I Am Sam (she was the youngest person to ever be nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance). Over the past three decades, Fanning has shape-shifted into an all-powerful vampire for the Twilight films, a badass punk rocker in The Runaways, and a dissociative Manson Family member in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood—all the while morphing from child star to seasoned professional. Having recently turned 30, Fanning has a new perspective. “I’ve been very busy the last few years, so, not that I want to slow down, but I want to make sure that I’m super present in everything, really soak it in, and not try to ever hurry up and get to the next thing,” she says.
“I feel life unfolds in the way that it’s supposed to and what’s meant for me will be mine, that’s kind of the way I live my life.”
Dakota Fanning
Fanning stars in the upcoming Netflix whodunit The Perfect Couple, alongside Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber, Eve Hewson, and Meghann Fahy. Directed by Susanne Bier, the series centres around the seemingly charmed lives of one of Nantucket’s wealthiest couples (Kidman and Schreiber), which are upended when a body is found on the day of their son’s wedding.
Fanning plays Abby, the wife of the couple’s other son. She is as pregnant as she is charmingly insufferable (in one scene, she exclaims, “This is vintage!” to stop the brothers from throwing punches in her presence). “I have some horrible things to say and do in this role, but I certainly relished in getting to be outrageous with that character,” she says. “I mean listen, not everyone’s a likeable person, not everyone says the right things at the right times in life.”
The Perfect Couple is as suspenseful as it is fun—each episode inexplicably begins with the cast performing a choreographed dance on the beach, which Fanning says is an ode to the quirkiness of the characters. “I could have watched Liev do it all day,” she says, laughing. Fanning describes filming the series as “idyllic,” with much of her time spent whale-watching and eating lobster rolls in Cape Cod with her co-stars. Kidman, who’d previously worked with Fanning’s younger sister, Elle, was a particular dream come true. “She’s such an icon, and she’s everything that you hope that she is when you meet with her and work with her,” she says.
Fanning also recently starred in Ripley, the latest adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s famed crime novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, for Netflix. Directed by Steven Zaillian and shot entirely in black and white, the series opts for a nuanced, neo-noir spin on the classic tale—as if created in the same era in which the story is set. She plays Marge Sherwood alongside Johnny Flynn as Dickie Greenleaf, with Andrew Scott in the title role. Ripley’s Marge is different than the Marge made famous by Gwyneth Paltrow in the 1999 film adaptation. “I am obsessed with that movie, but when I read the scripts and saw that it was going to be a fairly faithful adaptation to the novel and it wasn’t trying to be the movie, it seemed so different right from the start, so it was easy to not compare,” she says. “All things can exist and be great, so it was like a relief that I didn’t have to compare myself to something that’s already been done perfectly.”
Ripley filmed in some of Italy’s most picturesque locales for more than a year, a stretch of time that Fanning could only comprehend once seeing her work crystallized into a final product. “I watched all eight episodes, and it was a day that I will really never forget because the whole experience made sense,” she says. Both Fanning and Scott were nominated for Emmy Awards for their performances. “It’s been ever-present in my mind ever since I started, because it’s taken up a big part of the last few years from me in such a great way, so [to be nominated] is of course really exciting and I can’t believe it,” she says.
“I want to make sure that I’m super present in everything, really soak it in, and not try to ever hurry up and get to the next thing.”
Dakota Fanning
Fanning is an avid TV watcher, something that has surely made her an arbiter of good content (during our interview, there was a paused episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County in the other room at the ready for her to return to). So, it tracks that she started a production company, Lewellen Pictures, to run alongside her sister, Elle—the duo has used it to explore mediums they don’t otherwise work in, from podcasts to docuseries. Lewellen owns the rights to Paris Hilton’s memoir, which is currently being developed into a series. “If someone told Elle and I as little girls, ‘One day you’re going to become friends with Paris Hilton and tell her story,’ we would have lost our minds,” she says. Before the pandemic, the Fanning sisters were slated to play opposite each other for the first time, but the project fell through. “It’ll definitely happen, and it’ll maybe be the scariest thing we’ve ever done, but the most exciting,” she says. “It’s one of the things that’s undeniable and those are the things you know you have to see through.”
As Fanning settles into her third decade in Hollywood, she is poised to take what comes in stride. “I feel life unfolds in the way that it’s supposed to and what’s meant for me will be mine, that’s kind of the way I live my life,” she says, sounding wise beyond her years. She sees her next chapter as having children and a family. “I am enjoying my time without that before that hopefully happens in the not too far away future,” she says. We can’t wait to see what’s next.
Photography: Lea Winkler
Videographer: Matilda Montgomery
Styling: Samantha McMillen (The Wall Group)
Makeup: Kate Lee (Forward Artists)
Hair: Mara Roszak (A-Frame Agency)
Production: Hyperion LA
Photo Assistant: Roberto Kozek and Kurt Lavastida
Stylist Assistant: Melanie Bauer
Studio: Hype Studios LA
Cover Story: Randi Bergman
Editorial and Creative Director: Sahar Nooraei
Entertainment Editor: Elycia Rubin
Art Director: Jessica Hui
Fashion Director: Haley Dach
Associate Art Director: Melisssa Robinson
