Dakota Fanning: A Timeline

by Steven Smith

posted 07.05.05

Born: Hannah Dakota Fanning. Alternative names included Madison, Cheyenne, Brianna, Savannah and Mackenzie.

2 years old: While other children her age are learning to walk and talk, Dakota performed for her parents affection, all the while screaming, “Look Mommy! I’m an adult! Pay attention to me Daddy! Do you love me Mommy?”

5 years old: Dakota made a boy at the playground cry. When asked what was wrong, the boy said “a monster that talked like [his] mommy, but had the body of a little girl” attacked him.

7 years old: During an off-camera, Access Hollywood interview, Pat O’Brien asked Dakota if she has any role models in Hollywood. “Well, Jodie Foster calls me like, three times a day with advice,” said Fanning. “But I just tell her that ‘Panic Room’ sucked.” At which point Haley Joel Osment, who was tattooing a flaming skull on Dakota’s inner thigh, shouted “Awww, snap!” and threw Dakota a pound.

8 years old: In a shared interview with co-star Brittany Murphy for the movie “Uptown Girls”, Murphy praised Dakota on her remarkable depth for such a young actor. In response, Fanning says, “If I wanted thinly-veiled condescension from some two-bit, junkie cunt, I’d give Nanna Fanning a call.” Dakota then stubbed her cigarette out on the bridge of Murphy’s nose.

9 years old: While working on the set of “The Cat in the Hat”, Dakota develops a raging cocaine addiction in an attempt to match co-star Mike Myers manic energy. “This ain’t some bush league, pre-school pageant,” said Fanning. “This is Hollywood. And I’m going to smile bigger and perform better than anyone they pair me with. Even if I have to snort a little flake to do it.”

10 years old: In the downtime while filming “Man On Fire”, co-star Denzel Washington taught Dakota how to wrap a rubber band around her index finger and fire it across the room. Dakota took to shooting extras and members of the crew while screaming “FINGER BANG!” at the top of her lungs. “We swear we’ll explain to her what that means, the first time it stops being so funny,” Washington said.

13 years old: Dakota plays a shy girl in the film “Look Away, Look Away”. “It was a real challenge, getting into the head of someone who prefers to be unseen,” said Fanning. “The character in ‘Look Away, Look Away’ is the furthest from my actual personality of any character I’ve ever played, and I’ve played an alien.”

15 years old: As host of Saturday Night Live, Dakota finishes a sketch, turns to face the live studio audience, holds up a publicity photo of Jodie Foster from “Contact” and tears the picture in half. The nation is stunned into confusion.

18 years old: Rather than tempt child star fate, Dakota takes leave from her career to go to college and “study something world’s away from movies and Hollywood, to make myself a more well-rounded person.” She majored in theater at Yale.

20 years old: Dakota has her first period, her physiology delayed as a result of 80-hour workweeks in early adolescence.

23 years old: After a series of box office failures, producers and casting agents stop returning Dakota’s calls. In a moment of personal crisis, she moves in with what she thought was a Scientology sect, but turns out to be a bunch of nomadic, unemployed white guys squatting in the desert and stockpiling new age philosophy and munitions.

26 years old: After three years of intense focus and a failure to achieve triple-plus- good-extreme-astral-clarity, Dakota abandons the commune in search of a comeback career. She leaves behind a litter of children, failed results of the cult’s eugenics experiment.

27 years old: While working at a full service car wash outside of Los Angeles, Dakota cleans the windshield of Jodie Foster’s car. Foster snickers softly while snapping camera phone photos for her children.

28 years old: Dakota Fanning was last spotted at an In-n-Out Burger in Pasadena.