dakota fanning Acting career and early years

Hannah Dakota Fanningborn February 23, 1994 better known simply as Dakota Fanning, is an American actress. Fanning's breakthrough performance was in I Am Sam in 2001. As a child actress, she appeared in high-profile films such as Man on Fire, War of the Worlds, and Charlotte's Web. Fanning began transitioning to more adult roles with Hounddog and The Secret Life of Bees. Recent films have included The Twilight Saga and The Runaways. She has won numerous awards and is the youngest person to have been nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Contents
* 1 Personal life
* 2 Acting career
o 2.1 Early years
o 2.2 2002–2003
o 2.3 2004–2005
o 2.4 2006–2007
o 2.5 2008–2009
o 2.6 2010–present
* 3 Filmography
* 4 Television appearances
* 5 Awards and nominations
* 6 References
* 7 External links
Personal life
Dakota Fanning was born in Conyers, Georgia, the daughter of Joy (née Arrington), who played tennis professionally, and Steve Fanning, who played minor league baseball and now works as an electronics salesman in Los Angeles. Her maternal grandfather was former American football player, Rick Arrington, and her aunt is former ESPN reporter Jill Arrington. Dakota is the older sister of Elle Fanning, also an actress.
Fanning is of half German descent, and her last name is of Irish origin. Fanning and her family are Southern Baptist. She attends Campbell Hall School in North Hollywood, California, and is on the varsity spirit cheerleading squad.
Acting career
Early years
Fanning began acting at the age of five after appearing on a Tide commercial. Her first significant acting job was a guest-starring role in the NBC prime-time drama ER, which remains one of her favorite roles ("I played a car accident victim who has leukemia. I got to wear a neck brace and nose tubes for the two days I worked."
Fanning subsequently had several guest roles on established television series, including CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The Practice, and Spin City. She also portrayed the title characters of Ally McBeal and The Ellen Show as young girls. In 2001, Fanning was chosen to star opposite Sean Penn in the movie I Am Sam, the story of a mentally challenged man who fights for the custody of his daughter (played by Fanning).
Her role in the film made Fanning the youngest person ever to be nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award, being seven years of age at the time. She also won the Best Young Actor/Actress award from the Broadcast Film Critics Association for her performance.
2002–2003
In 2002, director Steven Spielberg cast Fanning in the lead child role of Allison "Allie" Clarke/Keys in the science fiction miniseries Taken. By this time, she had received positive notices by several film critics, including Tom Shales of The Washington Post, who wrote that Fanning "has the perfect sort of otherworldly look about her, an enchanting young actress called upon ... to carry a great weight."
In the same year, Fanning appeared in three films: as a kidnap victim who proves to be more than her abductors bargained for in Trapped, as the young version of Reese Witherspoon's character in Sweet Home Alabama, and as Katie in the movie Hansel and Gretel.
Fanning was featured even more prominently in two films released in 2003: playing the uptight child to an immature nanny played by Brittany Murphy in Uptown Girls and as Sally in The Cat in the Hat.
Fanning did voice-over work for four animated projects during this period, including voicing Satsuki in Disney's English language release of My Neighbor Totoro, a little girl in the Fox series Family Guy, and a young Wonder Woman in an episode of Cartoon Network's Justice League.