Interview Magazine - Elle Fanning
Elle Fanning has literally been acting for longer than she can remember. Chancing into a bit part in the 2001 Sean Penn vehicle I Am Sam before she turned two, Fanning followed her big sister Dakota into Hollywood with prestigious film work almost right off the bat. Early roles included The Door in the Floor (2004), Babel (2006), Reservation Road (2007), and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). Her charming performance as a movie star's daughter in Sofia Coppola's Somewhere (2010) seemed to announce a change—both a progression in her abilities as a performer and a distinctive taste in selecting projects—and since that time, Fanning has been putting together a series of impressive turns in increasingly impressive movies. Her performance as an English teen coming of age against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis in writer-director Sally Potter's Ginger & Rosa (2012) was widely acclaimed. And earlier this year, she led an incredible cast (including John Hawkes, Peter Dinklage, and Glenn Close) in Jeff Preiss's dark drama Low Down, about jazz musician Joe Albany. This month she gets to play the dreamy Princess Aurora—a.k.a. Sleeping Beauty—in Robert Stromberg's Maleficent, a painterly adaptation of Charles Perrault's fairy tale about the good princess, the enchanted forest, and one wicked fairy, and gets to hang out with her co-star Angelina Jolie in the process.
