As you can see, we have a new and beautiful layout here.

The site is going to celebrate 14 years online next month and, with Dakota doing some new shoots and everything, it is a really perfect moment to have a new layout here.

I would like to thanks my brother, Nicky, who got this layout for me. Also, would like to thank Gemma for this beautiful layout.

I am planning to add tons of new stuff here. I am trying to get some great photoshoots and some beautiful magazine scans to add here. If you want to help this site to keep online and get this stuff to upload here, please, feel free to go here to donate. Every single dollar will help with this.

Also, if you find any errors or have suggestions or something, please, feel free to contact me.

Thanks to everyone for the support and for visiting the site. Thanks from the bottom of my heart.
Anne

Since the tender age of seven, Dakota Fanning has owned every moment she’s been onscreen. The actor’s breakthrough came in the 2001 drama I Am Sam — a performance she received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for, making her the youngest nominee in SAG history. Fanning went on to star in Man on Fire and War of the Worlds, portray Cherie Currie in the musical biopic The Runaways, and deliver a captivating turn in the Emmy-nominated series The Alienist.

However, it was Fanning’s work as a Charles Manson acolyte in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood that convinced writer-director Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List) she would be the perfect Marge Sherwood in his eight-part series Ripley, a provocative adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley. An aspiring writer whose understated confidence exudes the air of upper-crust society, Marge is a constant companion of Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn), the errant playboy who is suddenly orbited by an odd stranger named Tom Ripley, played bewitchingly by Andrew Scott. Where others are taken in by the suave grifter, Marge can sense that the man is not what he seems.

Fanning jumped at the chance to play the character and take on the challenges associated with the role — not least of which was learning Italian prior to the months-long location shoot that visited Rome, Venice, Palermo, Capri, and Atrani on the Amalfi Coast. Perhaps the greatest artistic thrill, she says, was working opposite Scott in the confrontational moments between Tom and Marge: “I knew that it would be really fun to do those scenes with Andrew — and it was.”

An edited version of the conversation follows.

Krista Smith: What drew you to Ripley and why did you want to play Marge Sherwood?

Dakota Fanning: Having eight hours to explore these characters that you think you know, whether through the book or through the [1999] film adaptation, I was like, “Oh, that’s going to be amazing.” I was such an admirer of Steve and of Andrew. So when I [was cast as] Marge, I was overcome with excitement. Just hearing Steve’s vision and how devoted he was to the story, you knew that you were going to be supported. He’s so detailed, you were always going to know exactly where you stood. And that’s what I like as an actor.
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Dakota Fanning and Andrew Scott may have spent time together in Italy filming their new limited Netflix series ‘Ripley,’ but how well do they know each other’s careers? While Andrew attempts to remember answers to his own trivia questions, he and Dakota laugh over the gifts she’s received from celeb co-stars and those Andrew missed out on. The two hilariously reminisce about their pasts, including the first commercial Andrew ever starred in and Dakota’s first fashion campaign.

‘Ripley’ is available to stream on Netflix.

The “Ripley” star on the lessons she’s learned about acting—and life—over a 25-year career.

Dakota Fanning was just 5 years old on the set of her first project, a Tide commercial she scored after answering the question, “What do you want for Christmas?” at her audition. “All I wanted was mechanical pencils, and I think they chose me because I gave a weirder, more specific answer,” she tells us. In between setups, she heard the director call out for his “hero girl.”

“He was like, ‘Where’s hero girl? Can we get hero girl in here?’ ” Fanning recalls. “My mom and I, we were like, ‘Oh, that’s so cute. I’m a hero. That’s sweet.’ ”

It was only later that she learned “hero” is a production term for a particularly important prop. She was essentially sharing call sheet space with the detergent bottle being used in close-ups. “It wasn’t not a compliment,” Fanning says with a laugh. “But it wasn’t exactly specific to me.”

That was the first of a lifetime of lessons for Fanning, whose on-set education started early and never quite stopped. Her brief stint as a commercial kid star led to a trip from her home state of Georgia to Los Angeles to give pilot season a shot. At the time, she assumed she’d return home once the gigs stopped coming. As it turned out, they never did.

“I feel like that’s how it happens sometimes,” she says. “You’re just present day to day, and then all of a sudden I’m doing ‘I Am Sam’ with Sean Penn and Michelle Pfeiffer—which is a very different thing from being the ‘hero girl’ in a Tide commercial.”

“It has always been, even now, about holding onto that childlike imagination, because I really think that’s what acting is at the end of the day.”

In the decade that followed, Fanning was quite literally Hollywood’s poster child—which is to say, if you walked past a piece of movie marketing in the early aughts, there she was, promising a performance well beyond her years. Her turn in the aforementioned “I Am Sam” (2001) earned her a SAG Award nod for female supporting actor at only 7 years old, making her the youngest individual SAG nominee in history. In 2004, she stood toe-to-toe with Denzel Washington in Tony Scott’s “Man on Fire.” A year later, she had top billing in Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi blockbuster “War of the Worlds” opposite Tom Cruise, then sparred with Robert De Niro in John Polson’s psychological thriller “Hide and Seek.”

Today, Fanning remains a commanding onscreen presence. Case in point: her multilayered performance on Netflix’s thriller “Ripley,” Steven Zaillian’s limited series adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” Fanning plays the distrustful Marge Sherwood across from Andrew Scott’s con man, Tom Ripley.
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