Best Known As: Film Actor

Gist:  Hannah Dakota Fanning (born 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. She has won numerous awards and is currently the youngest person ever to have been nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Life Facts:  Fanning was born in Conyers, Georgia, the daughter of Joy (née Arrington), who played tennis professionally, and Steve Fanning, who played minor league baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals 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.{{cite news|last=Stein|first=Joel|coauthors=|title=The Million-Dollar Baby|pages=|publisher=Time|date=2005-02-27|url= Dakota is the older sister of Elle Fanning, also an actress.

Her father had wanted to name her "Dakota" and her mother wanted to name her "Hannah".

Fanning is of half German descent and her last name is of Irish origin. Fanning and her family are members of the Southern Baptist Convention. Fanning attends Campbell Hall School in North Hollywood, California and is on the junior varsity spirit cheerleading squad.

Career Facts:  Over the summer of 2006, Fanning worked on the film Hounddog, described in press reports as a "dark story of abuse, violence and Elvis Presley adulation in the rural South." Fanning's parents have been criticized for allowing her to film a scene in which her character is raped. However, in response, Fanning said that "It's not really happening," to Reuters. "It's a movie, and it's called acting." Director Deborah Kampmeier addressed the controversy in the January 2007 edition of Premiere: "The assumption that [Dakota] was violated in order to give this performance denies her talent."

In 2006, at the age of 12, she was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, becoming the youngest member in the Academy's history.

In March and April 2007, she filmed Fragments - Winged Creatures, alongside Kate Beckinsale, Guy Pearce, Josh Hutcherson, and Academy Award winners Forest Whitaker and Jennifer Hudson. She plays Anne Hagen, a girl who witnesses her father's murder and who turns to religion in the aftermath.

In July 2007, Fanning filmed for three days a short film titled Cutlass, one of Glamour's "Reel Moments" based on readers' personal essays. Cutlass was directed by Kate Hudson.

From September to December 2007, Fanning filmed Push which centers on a group of young American expatriates with telekinetic and clairvoyant abilities who hide from a U.S. government agency in Hong Kong and band together to try to escape the control of the division. Fanning plays Cassie Holmes, a thirteen-year-old psychic.