The Hollywood star talks control, clothes, and break-ups for Miu Miu Women’s Stories.

“I like to control things,” says Dakota Fanning, “and at a certain point, I realized that even being behind the camera, you can’t. You think being a director means being in charge of everything?” she laughs. “You’re wrong.”

Fanning’s in London for her directorial debut, a partnership with Miu Miu Women’s Stories called The Apartment. The 11-minute short film stars Eve Hewson as a young woman going solo, and it’s got bits of everything—breakups, cheap wine, art projects, and of course, designer dresses.

At a post-screening panel with Millennial screenwriter (and Golden Globe nominee) Liz Hannah, Fanning revealed her on-set anxiety, her future career strategy, and what happened when she started living alone in New York City.

Here are highlights from the room where it happened…

Control Anxiety

I’ve always been a very calm person—well, maybe not calm. I guess it’s more that I’ve been a very confident person… When you’re directing a movie, you’re viewed as a leader, but you’re also totally reliant on everyone else. People keep asking your opinions on everything—from the big stuff to things like, “Dakota, red napkins or blue napkins?”—and admitting you don’t know anything about napkins, “I don’t know, what do you think?” That’s the hardest part. But part of my job [as a director] was that I hired other people to make this movie with me, and I knew I needed to trust them. (We went with the blue, by the way.)

Costume Anxiety

I was worried in the beginning about having a main character always wearing Miu Miu and being amongst other people who were dressed really plainly. That seemed really strange to me, so we made sure every character had some Miu Miu. But we knew going in there would be standout moments with special pieces, like a white dress, and [Miu Miu] socks!… We also knew the cinematographer, Bobby Bukowski, was going to use the fabric as part of his shots… you would literally see [Eve Hewson’s] life through her clothes.

The actress joined forces with Miu Miu—and friend Liz Hannah, of The Post fame—to create the 15th short for the Italian label’s Women’s Tales series.

When Miu Miu asked Dakota Fanning to direct a short film (her first), she looked close to home for subject material. The final product? “Hello Apartment,” a spot-on, vivid portrait of how the spaces where we spend our formative years shape us into adults who may, someday, return to them and, all at once, remember everything. It also serves as an ode to Fanning’s own real-life apartment.

“Hello Apartment,” which premieres in London on Monday night, marks the 15th commission from Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales, which has previously featured shorts from legendary auteurs (Agnès Varda), groundbreaking directors (Ava DuVernay), and experimental multi-hyphenates (Miranda July and Chloë Sevigny). For the film, Fanning drew on her own formative first-apartment experiences. As she told Vanity Fair, “Even though my apartment’s very different from the one in the film, the experience of it is the same.” With the help of The Post writer and her friend Liz Hannah, Fanning perceptively captures how, as she put it, our homes become “shrine[s] to experiences” with the passage of time.

Told through the perspective of a Pepto pink-haired young woman named Ava (played by Irish actress Eve Hewson, of The Knick) who has just moved into an airy Brooklyn loft, the film traces her first love (with Tom Sturridge), loss, and inevitable red wine spills. It all comes with the knowing wisdom of a woman who’s been there and lived to tell the tale. Decades later, a much older Ava returns to this memory-charged, sunlit space to say, “Hello, apartment.”

I have added some photos of Dakota Fanning attending the New York Fashion Week. You can go to the gallery to take a look to the photos.

More new photos of Dakota Fanning have been added to the gallery.

A few photos of Dakota Fanning have been added to the gallery.