The bestElle Fanningmovies and TV shows include several great releases when she was a child actor and even more now that she has grown into a successful adult film and TV star. Fanning is the younger sister of Dakota Fanning, who herself was the youngest actor ever nominated for a SAG Award for her role inI Am Sam. That movie was also the first movie role for Elle Fanning, who played a younger version of her sister in the film. Elle then went on to star in several other movies as a child actor, mostly playing the main character’s daughter several times.
Her first big role came in 2011 when J.J. Abrams cast herin his sci-fi movieSuper 8, where she and some other kids come across an accident that unleashes a monster on their town. From there, Fanning began to get bigger and bigger roles,starring alongside Angelina Jolie in the Disney live-action movieMaleficentand then began to appear in more indie films, like the historical filmThe Beguiled, the biopicMary Shelley, and coming-of-age movies likeAll the Bright Places.
One of Elle Fanning’s lesser-known gems was the 2018 post-apocalyptic movieI Think We’re Alone Now.The movie stars Peter Dinklage as Del, a man who lives alone in a town after most of the human population died on a Tuesday afternoon. While he seems content living by himself and making it on his own, his life is shaken up whena young woman named Grace (Fanning) shows up in his town and begs him to let her stay there with him.
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This is a smaller movie with a small cast (mostly just Dinklage and Fanning) until some new people show up and claim to be Grace’s parents (Paul Giamatti and Charlotte Gainsbourg). This is when Del learns that things in the world of the survivors are more horrifying than he ever imagined. The film received a 63% fresh Rotten Tomatoes rating, with most of the praise going to the performances of Dinklage and Fanning, carrying an otherwise small story to great heights.
Nicolas Winding Refn’s movies are often polarizing, andThe Neon Demonis no different. All Fanning takes on the lead role in this Refn movie, starring as a 16-year-old aspiring model who moves from Georgia to Los Angeles after the unexplained deaths of her parents. She soon meets a photographer and other models, and they start to take a strong interest in her appearance and sexual experiences. In this psychological horror movie,Fanning’s Jesse starts a downward spiralwhere nothing is as it seems.
The movie is a shocking excess of body horror and has a deeper meaning of the world of models (and actors and musicians, and more), where everyone is willing to literally eat each other to get ahead. To describe the reaction to the movie, it received both a standing ovation from half the audience at Cannes and loud boos from the other half. It has a 59% Rotten Tomatoes score, with praise going to the look of the film and the cast, specifically the work of Jena Malone as makeup artist Ruby.
Based on the young adult novel by Jennifer Niven,All the Bright Placesis a teen romantic drama about two teenagers who live unhappily in a small town. Elle Fanning is Violet Markey,a young woman living with survivor’s guiltafter her sister dies. Most kids consider her a “freak.” Theodore Finch (Justice Smith) is a young man who meets her on the bridge where Violet’s sister died nine months earlier. The two develop a relationship, but the thought of suicide weighs heavily over both of them.
The movie has mixed reviews, with a slightly positive 64% Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes. The main complaint is thatAll the Bright Placesis often crushed by its own emotional weight, but it succeeds thanks to the strong acting talent of its young stars, Fanning and Smith. However, the film does a good job of painting the weight of expectations and the overwhelming feelings of despair that can often overwhelm people during times of darkness.
In 2014, Elle Fanning got one of her biggest roles when she starred alongside Angelina Jolie in the Disney live-action movieMaleficent. This is one of Disney’s re-tellings of classic animated villain’s origin stories. In this case, Jolie stars as Maleficent, the evil fairy fromSleeping Beautywho put Aurora to sleep to guarantee her own power. However, as this movie shows, there is more to the plot than expected, and Maleficent and Aurora have a much deeper relationship than in 1959’sSleeping Beauty.
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Elle Fanning stars as Aurora in this re-telling of the classic fairy tale. The release was a massive success, one of the biggest of Fanning’s career to this point, making $758 million at the box office. It received mostly mixed reviews, with a 54% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film received an Oscar nomination for Best Costume Design, and Fanning earned nominations at the Saturn Awards, Teen Choice Awards, and Kids' Choice Awards.
Elle Fanning previously worked with Sofia Coppola as a child in the 2010 movieSomewhere. In 2017, she returned to star as one of the leads in the Southern Gothic thrillerThe Beguiled. This film takes place during the American Civil War, when a wounded Union Army corporal (Colin Farrell) deserts his faction.He soon comes across a girls' school in Virginia, where the women take him into care for him while hiding him from the Confederate Army, who want him as a prisoner of war.
Nicole Kidman stars as the headmistress of the school, while Kirsten Dunst is a teacher named Edwina who falls in love with the soldier. Elle Fanning is Alicia, the oldest student who tries to seduce the soldier, only to be responsible for his eventual fate. Critics enjoyed the film, giving it a 78% Fresh Rotten Tomatoes score, with most of the praise going to Coppola’s direction and the performances by the cast. Coppola won Best Director forThe Beguiledat the Cannes Film Festival.
In 2022, Elle Fanning starred in the Hulu miniseriesThe Girl from Plainville. Based on the death by suicide of Conrad Roy in 2014, this tells the story of the involuntary manslaughter conviction against his girlfriend, Michelle Carter. The real story had Roy die by suicide when he was 18 after his girlfriend Carter, 17, sent him text messages telling him to do it. Thanks to the text messages in what the press called the “texting suicide case,” Carter ended up spending 11 months in prison.
Fanning stars Michelle Carter, the young woman who kept telling Carter to die by suicide. The miniseries is eight non-linear episodes, with two storylines playing out — one of their relationship and the other of the events after his death. The text messages are often depicted as actual conversations between the two teenagers to make the miniseries seem more dramatic. Critics loved the miniseries, giving it a 93% Fresh Rotten Tomatoes score. Fanning earned a Satellite Award nomination for her performance.
4A Complete Unknown (2024)
Sylvie Russo
James Mangold, who previously directed the movieWalk the Line, which told the story of Johnny Cash, returned to the musical biopic genre withA Complete Unknown. InWalk the Line, Mangold directed Reese Witherspoon to an Oscar win for her role as June Carter while Joaquin Phoenix earned an Oscar nomination for playing Johnny Cash. InA Complete Unknown, Mangold one-upped that with three acting nominations (Timothée Chalamet for Bob Dylan, Edward Norton for Pete Seeger, and Monica Barbaro for Joan Baez).
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While she didn’t get a nomination,Elle Fanning was also in the movie, playing Sylvie Russo, a character based on Suze Rotolo, an artist and Dylan’s girlfriend at the time. The reason for the change is that Dylan asked the filmmakers not to use her real name, but the character was based on Suze in all but name (viaRolling Stone). The film received an 82% Fresh Rotten Tomatoes score, with critics praising the performances above all else. The National Board of Review honored Fanning as the Best Supporting Actress.
My Neighbor Totorois one of Studio Ghibli’s best films, and as with all movies from the studio, a star-studded American voice-dubbing cast took part in the movie, dubbing it in English in 2005. The film takes place in 1950s Japan, where a professor and his daughters move into a home close to where their mother is recovering from a long-term illness. The girls soon learn that house spirits inhabit the home, andMei finds a larger spirit outdoors known as Totoro, although he won’t reveal himself to her sister.
Elle Fanning voices Mei in the American dub, while her older sister, Dakota Fanning, voices her sister Satsuki. The film has overwhelmingly positive reviews, with a 94% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and many animation fans consider it one of the best films of all time. The critics praisedMy Neighbor Totoro’s heart as well as the convincing sadness and desperation of the little girls who just want to see their mother return home and need a spirit like Totoro to watch over them.
Elle Fanning’s first role as a lead character in a major feature-length film came in the surprise 2011 movie by J.J. Abrams,Super 8. Abrams hinted at the film, but when it arrived, almost no one knew anything about what to expect.Super8is a love letter to Steven Spielberg films, and was co-produced by Spielberg himself. Set in 1979, the movie follows a group of teenagers who see a train derailed in their small town. However,they soon realize the train was transporting a monster, and it is now looseand hunting them.
The young cast is led by Joel Courtney as Joe, a 14-year-old mounting the death of his mother, and Elle Fanning as Alice, one of his friends. The theme of the loss of a parent is parallel to Spielberg’s movies, and both actors carry their roles with great aplomb despite their young age. Critics awarded the movie with an 81% Fresh Rotten Tomatoes score, while Fanning earned award nominations at the Satellite Awards, Empire Awards, Saturn Awards, and the Young Artist Awards.
The best role of Elle Fanning’s adult career came in a Hulu streaming series calledThe Great. This is a fictionalized retelling of the life of Catherine the Great. The full title is actuallyThe Great: An Occasionally True Story, and it plays out as much as a comedy as it does historical fiction. Fanning is Catherine the Great, and this series starts out with her marriage to Emperor Peter III (Nicholas Hoult) and her relationship with him and his body double Yemelyan Pugachev (also played by Hoult).
There are several historical inaccuracies, but those only add to the entertainment value, as this is mostly a satirical dark comedy-drama about Catherine the Great’s rise to power and the people trying to stand in her way. The series lasted for three seasons and 30 episodes before Hulu canceled it, even though the second and third seasons had perfect 100% Rotten Tomatoes scores.Elle Fanningwon a Satellite Award and earned three Golden Globes and one Primetime Emmy nomination for her performance.
