New York Times profiles Somewhere's Elle Fanning

In “Elle Fanning, the Next Golden Child," an upcoming Sunday Magazine article for the New York Times, Frank Bruni does an in-depth profile of Elle Fanning, who as he makes clear is not longer simply Dakota’s little sister. Indeed at 12, the one-time child star is growing up, and not just emotionally. For Somewhere, Bruni reports, “Coppola says that Fanning was growing so fast during the shoot in the summer of 2009, when she was 11, that she went up two shoe sizes in six weeks.” But as an actress this growth has been profound. Bruni says of her role: “She honors her character’s largely symbolic function as a wholesome, guileless foil to the show-biz cupidity and stupidity surrounding her father; her goofy smile and creamy complexion are as much a part of the performance as anything else.” (To get a sense of her career so far, check out our “People in Film: Elle Fanning”.) Yet with all her talent, Fanning is still a lovely young woman. Bruni reveals her sweetside in an anecdote about her relationship with co-star Stephen Dorff:

...she kept pestering him to tell her what he had bought her as a “wrap present” at the end of the “Somewhere” shoot. It was a gold bracelet festooned with pearls. “She opened it,” he told me, “and she started crying. She said, ‘Are these real?’ I said: ‘Yeah! You’re my leading lady. I couldn’t have done it without you.’ ”