CEBU, Philippines - At just 17 and 21, Elle and Dakota Fanning are already pretty much Hollywood royalty. They may be young, but their co-stars have included Sean Penn, Annette Bening, Denzel Washington, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, and Susan Sarandon (who has now worked with both actresses). But when it comes to their careers, as Elle tells Net-A-Porter’s The Edit magazine, they keep things very separate.
“I never look at her scripts,” Elle says of her big sister. “She’s doing a movie right now in Berlin; I don’t even know what it’s about.”
Just in case Elle’s reading, the movie Dakota is currently filming is called “Brimstone”; Dakota plays a woman accused by an overzealous reverend, played by Guy Pearce, of a crime she did not commit.
When it comes to fashion, however, Elle and Dakota don’t keep things as separate.
“I used to steal Dakota’s clothes, but one time the paparazzi got me,” Elle admits. “She called me from New York: ‘What are you doing in my clothes?’”
The borrowing is, however, a one way street, as Elle has previously said that her clothes were “too weird” for Dakota.
Elle claims it was Dakota who inspired her to get into acting herself: “It was like, if Dakota can do it, I can do it.”
And while most of her early roles were chosen for her, she’s been choosing her own projects since “Super 8”; her newest is her most daring yet, playing a transgender teen in “About Ray.”
“I was really nervous not to screw up, because this is for transgender kids out there,” Elle explains. “We had trans kids at my school.
They come back after the summer and you have to use different pronouns.”
Whatever happens, we’ll certainly be seeing a lot more of the Fanning sisters in coming years. Together, the two currently have 12 different films in some state of filming, pre-, or post-production. But one place you won’t be seeing Elle is on social media.
“This generation is so into social media, they’re always on the phone,” Elle says. “Some celebrities have all of these photos and witty captions. But what if I didn’t have that and my account was a complete fail that no one followed?” (FREEMAN)