Once, many years and a couple of jobs ago, Intel Chris interviewed Dakota Fanning at a premiere of one of her movies, Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story. She was 11. Other stars that night were never more than five or so feet away from their publicists, who would (not always) gently cough if the interview went too long or a question was inappropriate. We talked to the rest of the cast, and when it came time to talk to Dakota, who was wearing a pretty sundress, her mother introduced them politely. Then the woman walked away to another part of the movie-theater lobby and left us to sit down on a banquette with Dakota alone. Not only could we have asked any incredibly awful question we pleased, we could have tucked her under his arm and run away with her. But her mother clearly knew that Dakota could take care of herself and was poised enough not to be thrown by anything so silly as a rude question or a rogue kidnapping.

Intel thought of that moment today when we read on nylonmag.com that Dakota took a tour of NYU's Gallatin School. Because we don't tend to believe most starlets really have the self-possession to make it through four years of college (even a "make up your own curriculum" one like Gallatin. The Olsen twins couldn't manage it!). But there's something about that Dakota Fanning that makes us think she could be one of the rare actresses to qualify for the Natalie Portman Exception.

NyMag.Com

The female stars of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse have been photographed for a major spread in Vanity Fair, Gossip Cop has learned exclusively.
Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning, Nikki Reed and Elizabeth Reaser (among others) participated in a photo shoot last Sunday for an issue set to arrive on stands around the time Eclipse hits theaters.
Gossip Cop will keep you updated with more details. Stay tuned.
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When Dakota Fanning was approached to play a sexed-up singer from the seventies, she knew exactly what to do.

She hit YouTube. “I didn’t know a lot about The Runaways or Cherie Currie when I got the script. I looked online to see the videos of the Live in Japan tour and her performing Cherry Bomb, and I realized that I wanted to play her,” says Fanning. She knew of Joan Jett, she adds, but she’d had little exposure to the rest of the electric era.

Jett is an executive producer of The Runaways, a film based on Currie’s memoir chronicling the sharp rise and fall of the all-girl band. Fanning embraced her first major adult role, playing lead singer and sex kitten Currie opposite a leather-studded, chin-jutting young Jett, played by Kristen Stewart.

“A lot of people still think of me as young, and as the girl from I Am Sam, or whatever,” the 16-year-old Fanning says on a sunny afternoon after a day of non-stop press. She’s plopped on a couch in her hotel room, dressed casually in skinny jeans, open-laced boots and a grey blazer. “After this, I might be able to do different things. As you get older, there are roles you can no longer do, and so many more things you can do.”

Mentored on-set by Currie, the on-screen Fanning dives deep into the role: drinking, smoking (herbal cigarettes, she says) and thrusting sexuality full-force into the camera with each throaty cherry-bomb burst. In person, though, she is still the sweet, fresh-faced young actor behind past performances in I Am Sam, The Secret Life of Bees and Charlotte’s Web. “I really liked that I was 15 (playing the role), and (Currie) was 15, and seeing what a different time I’ve grown up in,” she says. “I thought: ‘I could probably never do this, I could probably never be on my own and on the road and performing in lingerie.”


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Dakota Fanning still acts her age in The Runaways, but 1970s jailbait rocker is a role to shock anyone believing she's still that kewpie doll from I Am Sam, Dreamer and War of the Worlds.

As Runaways singer Cherie Currie, the 16-year-old actor vaults beyond ingenue to snorting a palm full of cocaine, groping male groupies and sharing a steamy same-sex kiss with co-star Kristen Stewart. Fanning also squeezes into Currie's signature lingerie to perform several Runaways hits, including that unsubtle anthem of teenage sexuality, Cherry Bomb.

The little girl is growing up fast, at least on screen.

In real life, Fanning is a cheerleader at her North Hollywood high school, an avid knitter, and dabbles in piano and violin while learning to speak French.

None of that jibes with Currie's amoral excesses, which is why her profession is called "acting." That's a contradiction moviegoers should get used to seeing, as Fanning explained during a telephone chat while on spring break:

You're smartly maturing on screen with your role choices, like The Runaways. Are these entirely your decisions, or your parents and advisors?

A lot of people are ultimately involved in the decisions, but at the end of the day it's me who has to decide. When you make a movie, you give a part of yourself to the character. I have to move me, and inspire me, at the end of the day. I know there's that certain feeling when you read a script and it speaks to you. You feel like it was made for you, in a way.

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