Dakota Fanning, who has been acting since the age of 6, remembers how uncomfortable she felt when press would interview her at a very young age in the early aughts.
The now-30-year-old told the Cut Tuesday, “People would ask super-inappropriate questions.
“I was in an interview as a child and somebody asked, ‘How could you possibly have any friends?’”
She implied the query sparked confusion in her as to why that question would even be asked to a child.
Fanning shared that she often felt that the public were “wanting” for her to “fail or something.”
“It makes you feel a little bit guarded,” the “I Am Sam” star admitted. “I’m just living my life over here.”
Fanning shared that part of the reason she feels she never fell into the dark side of child stardom was because she was “a little too young for it to fully hit [her].”
“People couldn’t get away with that kind of thing so much anymore,” the “Uptown Girls” actress added.
“By the time I got to that age, it was sort of being recognized as probably not the best way to treat people.”
However, Fanning said she has “a lot of compassion” for stars like Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, whom she said had been “made into examples.”
“If society and the media hadn’t played their part, who knows?” she pondered.
The “Watchers” star also credited her parents, though, for helping her stay grounded, saying her family is comprised of “very nice, kind, protective people.”
Fanning said she has also been able to have “some separation” between her normal life and the industry.
“I don’t get dressed to walk down the street. That’s just not me,” the “War of the Worlds” star said.
“I am just an actor. And the other things that come with it are things that you kind of deal with.”
Fanning has said in the past that she’s often felt she’s had to defend her choice to become a child star.
In 2018, she told Variety, however, that she feels acting “added something onto [her] childhood.”
“When I look back and I think of the experiences being an actor has brought me, I just don’t know a lot of other people our age who have been to the places we’ve been and met all different kinds of people and the friendships,” the “Charlottte’s Web” star reflected at the time.
“It’s added so much to my life and it does kind of hurt me a little bit when people try and somehow turn it into a negative and I don’t like it.”
