It is hard to believe but Dakota Fanning confirms it for us – she is a bona fide acting veteran and though she is only just 30 she has been in front of the cameras continuously for 24 years since starting in a Tide commercial at just age 6. The next year she landed a plumb opportunity opposite Sean Penn and Michelle Pfeiffer in I Am Sam and in the process became the youngest SAG nominee in history. A number of key roles followed including opposite Denzel Washington in Man On Fire when she was just 10 years old.
Last year, all grown up, she got to reunite with him in The Equalizer 3. In between there have been a host of roles including June in the Twilight trilogy, opposite Tom Cruise in War Of The Worlds, as Lily Owens in Secret Life Of Bees, and so much more. Another breakthrough came playing Squeaky Fromme in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
That fortuitous casting was caught by Oscar winning writer/director Steven Zaillian who saw it and immediately thought of her as the perfect choice to play Marge in his new Netflix Limited Series, Ripley which is a completely new take on the Patricia Highsmith 1955 novel that has been previously filmed before as Purple Noon in 1960 and The Talented Mr. Ripley in 1999. Fanning joins me for this edition of my Deadline video series, The Actor’s Side where we talk about her remarkable and lasting career all the way up to her first-ever Emmy nomination this year as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series, A.