At the tender age of 8, Dakota Fanning is already and accomplished actor. She began her career when she was 5, appearing in a national commercial for Tide. Fanning, the youngest actor to be nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for her brilliant performance opposite Sean Pean in I Am Sam, recently wrapped production as the central character in Steven Spielberg Presents 'Taken', the most anticipated event of the year. Fanning stars as Ally, a child endowed with special powers who is the focus of this intense drama that weaves together the story of three families and their crucial roles in the history of alien encounters over four generations. As the heart and soul of the miniseries she narrates the entire story from her point of view.
Hollywood has taken notice of the busy young ingenue. Fanning will soon star opposite Mike Meyers in the upcoming Dr. Seuss film adaption The Cat in the Hat and has already begun shooting Molly Gunn in New York opposite Brittany Murphy as a precocious girl who is "8 going on 40." Audiences will next see Fanning in the film Trapped starring as Charlize Theron's daughter, Abby, who suffers from asthma and find herself victim of a kidnapping. Courtney Love and Kevin Bacon also star in the film to be released this fall.
Allie, the character she plays in Taken, is more than human. "She's a very special human being because she really cares about her mom. She's very close to her mom. She's very important to the aliens. She's just a great person." Great in more ways than one because she comes from a family of mixed blood: human and alien."Lisa is the mom. Her grandfather was an alien and her dad was half alien. And then my dad Charlie, he has been abducted. Lisa was also. So, that's kind of how they met. They met on an alien craft." Being part alien, Allie has some unusual abilities.
"Some of the aliens, like me, they lokk like normal people, but hey have these powers. The other aliens are called grays. "In a scene that I had to do, "Fanning says, "I was on a highway and I wanted to go right across the highway so I made the cars stop." In a way, she can stop time and she can do certain things. Like she can make people think something's happening and it's really not. Some of the aliens, like me, they look like normal people but they have these special powers. The other aliens are called grays. I might have seen some pictures of them, but I haven't actually seen them in real life. They're very spooky-looking...very creepy. They're gray and they have a pointy chin and then these humongous eyes. Huge, huge, huge, black eyes."
Fanning has nothing but good words regarding her exeriences on Taken. "Everybody has been great and all of the directors. That is what is great about this project- you get different directors for each episode. And what about Spielberg? "I went to the re-release of E.T.. It's one of my favorite movies. I loved it. It was great. And I went back to L.A. so I met him then. But, he hasn't acturally come to the set yet. So I haven't met him on the set."
At the rate Dakota Fanning is going, she's bound to work with many great talents in Hollywood. Who knows? Maybe she'll even follow in the footsteps of former child actors like Drew Barrymore...who started in Spielberg's E.T. at a tender age.

The article is accompanied by a half page color closeup photo of Dakota as Ally, holding two star charms in her hands.