Dakota Fanning pays tribute to her younger self with a sweet photo
Dakota Fanning throws it back to her younger years.
“I’m Sam premiered 2001,” Fanning, 30, wrote via Instagram on Saturday, September 21. In the sweet photo, a then 7-year-old Fanning smiled as she rocked a yellow dress as she walked the red carpet.
“I always think of this little girl and hold her close,” she wrote.
Fanning started acting when she was five years old and skyrocketed to stardom when she appeared alongside the film in 2001 Sean Penn And Michelle Pfeiffer. She earned a SAG Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role and received a Critic’s Choice Award for Best Young Actor/Actress in 2002.
Fanning has been candid over the years about her rise to fame at a young age.
“When I look back and think about the experiences that being an actor has brought me, I just don’t know many other people our age who have been to the places we’ve been and met all different types of people and the friendships,” she said in 2018 for Variety‘s Actors on Actors series. “It’s added so much to my life and it kind of hurts me when people try to turn it into something negative somehow and I don’t like it.”
In an interview in April, Fanning admitted that being an actor is “a big part” of her identity. “I don’t really know who I would be without it,” she told PORTER at the time. “But I also want to organize my life and career in such a way that I always have a choice.”
For Fanning, having children is “probably more important” than anything, including acting.
“If someone told me I had to choose, I would choose to have children. I’m one of those people who has always felt that pull,” she explained. “I don’t know how I’ll feel when that time comes in my life – and how much I’ll want to work. But because I don’t have that at the moment, I now try to take advantage of the adventures.”
Fanning continued: “I’m trying to push myself to keep saying yes to things that make me uncomfortable, to go to places that might scare me for long periods of time, because – God willing – one day will win. not be that easy.”
While reflecting on growing up in the spotlight, Fanning noted that she’s glad she didn’t have to live with social media. Fanning added that being a child star now is “such a different experience.”
“I hate to reduce it to social media, but that’s the biggest societal difference — and I think we’re still figuring out how to use it properly,” she said. “I’m grateful I didn’t have to deal with that; there was enough happening already.”
