IN IMDB YEARS, ELLE FANNING SHOULD BE APPROACHING her mid forties. She’s taken on 55different roles (with a further seven films coming) since her first acting gig, aged two, in I Am Sam, alongside her older sister, actress Dakota. Of course, in reality, 18-year-old Elle’s long résumé has created a teen with a depth of experience and wisdom.

As Harper Lee wrote, ‘You never really understand a person… until you climb into [her] skin and walk around in it.’ And through her work, Elle has done just that. She played a transgender boy in About Ray, a Disney princess in Maleficent, a politically awakened teen in Trumbo, a lonesome 11 year old in Somewhere, a narcissistic supermodel in The Neon Demon, and a young feminist in this month’s 20th Century Women.

‘When you get these parts, the women become a part of you,’ she tells me over breakfast in her home city of Los Angeles. ‘I was acting while growing up myself, so I’d feel older after each character.’ Who better then to solve some of our life dilemmas?

We asked readers to submit their questions, and it turns out that Elle was born to be an agony aunt. ‘Friends come to me for advice,’ she says. ‘I say it how it is. They know I’ll be honest with them. There’s none of that post-truth stuff with me.’

Elle is, perhaps, the teenager we all wish we’d been: she’s kind (even to grumpy waiters) and looks entirely together at 8.30am in a black cashmere polo, midi skirt and Dr. Martens. She’s the epitome of cool and has Solange’s number in her mobile to prove it – the pair recently met, by chance, in a cafe in New Orleans, and Knowles insisted they hang. But it’s Elle’s spirit that’s most enviable. She throws herself into everything she does with assurance, drive and unadulterated joy, even when that’s plunging into a pool, mid-winter, for our cover shoot.

She’s recently back from six weeks shooting Sofia Coppola’s Civil War remake of The Beguiled in New Orleans alongside Nicole Kidman, with some life advice of her own: ‘Nicole told me, “Find your tribe, and they’ll always be behind you.” I like that.’ So lie back on the couch, Dear Reader, and take heed of Elle’s wisdom.

Before Elle Fanning hits the big screen as Princess Aurora opposite Angelina Jolie in Maleficent, she’s playing a fashion princess in Paris during fashion week. The star of Miu Miu’s spring campaign, the 15-year-old (soon to be 16-year-old!) actress was all smiles in the front row yesterday.

We caught up with her to talk getting older (as in turning 16) and learning to drive.
Hi Elle, do you mind answering a few questions for… ELLE?

Ha, sure, Elle for ELLE!

I know you’re a big fan of the brand…

This is the first Miu Miu show I’ve ever been to. I got to do the campaign, so I’m so excited to be here.
What was the experience like of shooting the campaign?

It was very fun. That collection in particular I loved, it all looked like sherbet. It was so girly, and I’m a fairly girly girl, so I love it.

How would you describe your style– has it evolved?

I’m getting older: I’ll be 16 soon.

Sweet 16!

Yeah, it’s a big deal! And I feel like I’m dressing a bit older, but it’s kinda just how I feel. I haven’t been analyzing it. I just put on what I want to put on. It’s like, ‘I don’t hate that today.’ I’m discovering some things in my closet that I used to wear and bringing them back. I never get rid of anything. I always keep it all.
Are you an organized closet person?

Messy organized. It’s very messy but I know where everything is.
So, any birthday plans?

I might not be in town for my sweet 16 so I had a dinner with my friends already, so now I’m just going to be with my family.
If you could get anything for your birthday…

That’s so hard! I haven’t even thought about what to get. I like really weird gifts. Someone already gave me antique opera glasses made out of pearl. They’re really cool.
And are you driving?

Nooo! I don’t have my permit because I haven’t had time to learn the stuff. I mean, it’s hard. They ask you things, that, like, my mom doesn’t even know the answer. But I’m definitely going to learn. [Source]

At just 14, Elle Fanning has already fallen in and out of love, risen from the dead, and survived an alien invasion. Her performances are fraught with an increasingly heady mix of innocence and experience, and she’s just getting started. Kathryn Borel sits down with the ‘Ginger & Rosa’ star as she prepares for take off.

ELLE FANNING would make more sense if she’d walked into the lobby of the Sunset Tower Hotel with her face pointed toward her steel-capped boots, grim-mouthed and moping behind a flat sheet of blond hair. The characters she has recently played have had a tender, distinctly mid-’90s languidness that recall the combined agita of Jeffrey Eugenides’ Lisbon sisters and the tentative, bruising vulnerability of Angela Chase. Fanning is only 14 years old. Surely she’s experiencing some pubescent anguish.

But on the morning of our interview, Fanning makes her entrance as though she’s morning itself—cheery, optimistic, and with an airy lightness that reaches all corners of the room. She’s lithe and foal-limbed in a long rose floral dress that brushes the round tips of her sensible clogs. Her face is fresh-scrubbed, and possesses a luminous grin that seems almost physically impossible to invert. As she energetically shakes my hand, I find myself searching her clear eyes for some darkness or injury lingering deep inside, closer to her brain. But all I get is clarity and more clarity, the pure goodness of a person who so far has eluded the Bad Feelings brought on by the emotional shifts of adolescence.

British filmmaker Sally Potter’s new film about the inseparable friendship between two teenage girls set in Cold War-era London has gained praise as a return to cinematic form for Potter and a powerful acting turn by American teen Elle Fanning.

Fanning, the rising star and younger sister of Dakota Fanning, auditioned for the role at the age of 12 and adopts an accomplished British accent to play politically aware Londoner Ginger in “Ginger & Rosa,” which screened Monday at the New York Film Festival.

“Orlando” filmmaker Potter, 63, told a news conference that while the film features various U.S. actors including Annette Bening and Oliver Platt, she did not set out to cast Americans Fanning and Alessandro Nivola in the central roles of Ginger and her charming, pacifist father.

She was searching for an unknown young English actress and scanned more than 2,000 such leads before coming across Fanning, who started acting just before age 3 and who recently caught attention in “Super 8” and other films.

A giggling Fanning told reporters her blonde hair was dyed red, befitting the name of her nuclear bomb-protesting and poet title character, for the film that explores adolescence, family discord and political and moral contradictions.