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| Dreams from Dakota: Dakota Fanning on “Dreamer” |
The actress with the author. Notice that his tie is older than she is. |
by Dan Lybarger
It’s difficult, no make that impossible, to write anything but a gushy fan piece about Dakota Fanning. At the age of 11, she’s managed to make even trash like “Hide and Seek” and “Man on Fire” briefly tolerable when she’s on screen. She can also hold her own with or even upstage costars as formidable as Denzel Washington, Robert De Niro, Tom Cruise (“War of the Worlds”) or Sean Penn (“I Am Sam”).
What’s most endearing about her, though, is that she comes across is a surprisingly down-to-earth and personable kid. In a recent roundtable interview in Kansas City to promote her new movie “Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story,” the young actress cheerfully bounded to the head of the table and was ready to field questions faster than reporters could start asking them.
Running to Win
Fanning's responses were usually brief, but she handled the crowd with a dignity and poise a lot of adult actors would envy.
For example, when a lot of performers plug movies based on real incidents, they’re usually clueless. Fanning, however, was prepared to explain the real story that inspired her movie.
“Mariah’s Storm was a horse that broke its leg in the same way that the horse in the movie does. She was also nursed back to health and ran in a big race and won. And she is the mother to Giant’s Causeway, who’s a really great racehorse,” she recalls.
Fanning explains that mechanical horses were used for some of the stunt scenes, including one named “Stuffy” that was featured during the injury scene. Fake horses were also used for a scene where she’s carried by a spooked filly. “I was on the fake horse. I couldn’t have a helmet on in the scene, and they wouldn’t let me do it without a helmet.”
In the film, she plays a girl named Cale Crane who convinces her horse trainer father (Kurt Russell) to raise a wounded filly named Soñador back to racing shape.
On screen, Fanning looks as if she’s been with horses all her life, but she admits, “I didn’t have any experience. I didn’t know anything about it at all, so I learned from the beginning how to ride and how to take care of them.”
She adds, “We were in Kentucky (some locations were in Louisiana), so just by going there, it’s all ‘horses, horses, horses.’ Just being there helps me a lot.”
The actress now owns a horse of her own named Goldie that Russell gave her at the end of the shoot. “He was like my dad on the set,” she says. Even though critics have tended to single her out in her films, the actress maintains, “With this film, I don’t think it would be the same without all the cast. All the cast in the film is so important. And I’ve had so much fun with all of them. We’re all just like a really big family.”
As for the equine members of her on-screen family, Fanning recalls that five flesh-and-blood horses played Soñador, but only one, Sacrifice, actually received prominent billing. “There (were) five thoroughbreds. I was never with Sacrifice. Sacrifice was only used for some of the racing scenes, but I think they put his name because he’s (writer-director) John Gatins’ horse.”
Voices Carry
In addition to a prolific onscreen career, Fanning has also kept herself busy with voiceover and animation work. Fanning narrated Jessica Yu’s documentary about artist and writer Henry Darger, “In the Realms of the Unreal” and provided the voice of Lilo in “Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch.” She and her sister Elle have also contributed their voices for a new English-language soundtrack for Hayao Miyazaki’s masterpiece “My Neighbor Totoro.”
According to Fanning, her off-camera work is quite different. “It’s not the same at all. It’s totally different when you’re doing voiceover because when you’re acting it’s more subtle. When you’re doing voiceover, it’s like really loud and not so natural. I think you kind of work with your cartoon. You kind of just watch your cartoon and then put your voice into it.”
One thing that has probably helped the Atlanta born actress land so much voice work is the fact that her voice has no trace of her roots. “I’ve never had (an accent). My sister has one. My grandmother has one. My mom has one. I’ve never had one, even when I was little and living there.”
No Couch Jumping Here
If the money her movies have generated has gone to Fanning’s head, it sure didn’t show during the roundtable. When asked about being a third-generation Girl Scout, the actress beamed before the question was even over. She still managed to keep up with her studies and to keep her composure during a whirlwind promotional tour.
Likewise, her parents seem to have a better grasp on handling their child’s good fortune. During the roundtable, Fanning’s mother sat quietly in the background and said nothing. Afterward, she politely offered to take interviewers’ pictures with the star, including the one featured at the beginning of this article.
Fanning says she’s currently taking a break, and she’ll be seen next year in a new live-action adaptation of “Charlotte’s Web.” Still, it’s obvious we’ll see more of her. “I’ve been acting for five years. It’s something that I will always want to do for the rest of my life.”
link directly to this feature at http://hollywoodbitchslap.com/feature.php?feature=1623
originally posted: 10/20/05 11:29:09
last updated: 10/31/05 05:33:09
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