Warning: Some of these titles contain mentions of suicide (in particular, 14 and 16).
In the past two weeks, I have watched nearly every Elle Fanning vehicle. And I have come to a not-so-shocking conclusion: She is good in absolutely everything. The girl simply does not miss. Do some movies that she stars in miss? Sure. But Elle as a performer? Never. She always goes for it — and whether she’s an empress, a princess, a possible murderer, American, English, German, or Russian, she always has the range to pull it off.
It’s odd to call someone who’s been acting since she was 2 (then in the shadow of her older sister, Dakota) a “secret,” but after bingeing her work, I am convinced she is secretly the best actor of her generation. Fanning possesses the unique ability to pull off precociousness endearingly, embodying the wisdom of a woman twice her age.
Directors have clearly identified this ageless quality to her performances as well, casting her in a handful of period pieces that require she toe the line of modernity and 18th/19th-century traditionalism. You believe her in a corset or as a ’70s flower child just as much as you do plopped in the 2010s with a Sidekick glued to her hand.
In Fanning’s most recent starring role in the Hulu limited seriesThe Girl From Plainville, she returns to period work (albeit a period much fresher in our minds), depicting Michelle Carter in the real-life “texting-suicide case” of 2014. Requiring a notable physical transformation, flashback work, and the mining of heavy material, in some ways, this is the perfect showcase of Fanning’s skillset as an actor thus far.
This had me itching to retrace the prolific 24-year-old’s journey up to this point. Below, I’ve rounded up a list of essential Fanning roles that help us make sense of this moment in her career.
