Both Elle Fanning and Dakota Fanning appear to have grown up on camera, with a very familiar face in Hollywood. Dakota, now 31 years old, began appearing on television in the early 2000s before I appeared in Sam in 2001.
She was her younger sister, but 27-year-old Elle began performing around the same time as Dakota, performing the two-year-old version of the character on “I Am Sam.” She has since starred in Maleficent, Mary Shelley and the Completely Unknown Mary, and is the popular Full Show the Great.
The sibling relationship may be competitive, but Fanning doesn’t seem to just support each other. They founded the production company Lewellen Pictures in 2021, then signed an initial look agreement with Civic Center Media and MRC Television, and began to successfully collaborate.
“We are thrilled to launch this company together,” they said in a joint statement at the time. “Our goal is to tell stories through comedy and drama that are authentic to human experiences, not just from our own perspective.”
Fans are interested in the sister dynamics behind the business partnership, so there’s everything about Dakota, Elle and their close relationship.
More about Fanning’s Sisters
Where did Dakota and Elle Fanning grow up?
The two sisters are originally from Conairs, Georgia. According to Elle’s 2010 profile in the New York Times magazine, the family split their time between there and California before moving to Los Angeles when Dakota began appearing in many projects around the age of six. However, they certainly seem to feel connected to the South through family history and upbringing. In 2016, Dakota shared more about it while talking to the town and the country.
“I was raised by a very traditional Southern parent,” she shared. “You don’t air dirty laundry to people who aren’t your family or friends. Why do I want to portray myself together?”
In 2020, Elle explained Georgia’s colloquial language in an interview with Vanity Fair, saying “Autumn” instead of “Autumn,” and sharing “Peach-like cute” is a high tribute. Also, all “tea” in Georgia is sweet tea, and her grandmother’s tea is amazing. The actress is a huge fan of Waffle House and is otherwise known as “the best restaurant in the world.”
The family actually has a long history, and Ancestry.com records link them to royalty through his mother, Heather Joy Arrington. According to a 2014 People’s post, they are great grandsons of Edward III’s 22nd grandson. This will have a very distant relationship with Kate Middleton, the current Princess of Wales. Her mother, Carol Middleton, is also the great grandson of Edward III, and has Kate’s 21st cousins Elle and Dakota.
What made them both perform?
In 2018, while speaking to promote her show “Alienist” at a panel at the Sundance Film Festival, Dakota described the beginning of her career as “accidental.”
“It all started out very accidentally for me,” she said. “I did this commercial, and I had a good time, so I did another time, and I changed to a movie, and I was an actor all of a sudden.
Dakota continued. “I liked playing around the house and creating scenarios, and my mother realized I was indifferent to all the lessons she had put into me.
Elle told Porter in 2019 that she and her sister enjoyed playing at home before she was in front of the camera.
“My sister and I play these elaborate scenes around the house,” Elle explained. “Like the birth scene. I’m going to be a baby and come out. That crazy thing.”
They had several different interests: Elle said she was interested in Dakota’s annoying, and she was interested in singing and dancing.
“My sister yelled at me in silence and screaming. “I had this hyper.
What projects are they working on together?
In 2019, the pair announced they had planned to play the sisters in an adaptation of the novel The Nightingale. Elle told Porter in 2022 that it was the first time they’d acted together like this, so they wanted to do it right.
“It’s very rare and special,” she said. “We can’t do it again, so we want it to be the right thing.”
However, production was delayed due to Covid-19 and did not receive a release date. While Happy Sad was confused on the podcast in 2023, Elle told host Josh Horowitz that the project might “come back” and that they both love the script. She also said they are now offered many stories about the sisters.
“There are things in the air where every creative has one idea at the same time, and now it feels like a lot of sisters are coming to us,” she said. “We’re like, ‘We can’t work together on everything now!” But we might also be really enjoyable to have to do another sister’s story first. ”
When the production company was announced, Deadline reported that it would develop not only films but also television shows, and that it had begun working on television adaptation for Megan Miranda’s novel The Last House Guest. In 2022, they produced The Girl, a Plainville Hulu miniseries starring Elle as Michelle Carter. The series was based on the true story of a woman convicted of involuntary manslaughter after her boyfriend died of suicide at her urging.
In April 2023, Lewellen Pictures began working on a Hulu docusary called MasterMind. That same year, a Hollywood reporter announced that he would be working on a television show about Paris Hilton.
“All we did was grow a simple life,” Elle said. “Dakota is in Paris and I’ve always been Nicole.”
On July 22, 2025, Sony Pictures confirmed that Elle and Dakota’s The Nightingale film adaptation was officially underway. Elle plays Isabel and Dakota becomes Vianne.
What else did they say about each other?
For Elle’s birthday in 2024, Dakota writes a squirt for her sister and shares it in an Instagram post.
On Dakota’s birthday in February 2025, Elle called her “my favorite person in the world.”
On Dakota’s big 30th birthday in 2025, Elle said, “I could sit and listen to him talk for hours. In fact, my favorite place to absorb your advice… Your fascinating views of the world… I’ve always felt safe with you.
In 2019, while talking to Shape, Dakota said: “My sister Elle and I are really close. We’re always like that. We’re very different, but we’re very connected.
She said, “No one wants to succeed in this business more than her sister. I know she wants the same for me.”
In the cover story of the October 2025 Vanity Fair, the sisters talked about how they can navigate family and fame together. Dakota said she never felt a rivalry with Elle, even when they were surrounded by the same people in the industry. “Zero,” she explained. “We share a lot of things that obviously include stylists and public relations, but we are very different. So I don’t think even the right thing for her is right for me. I don’t feel competitive, but I know that people probably don’t believe it.”
Meanwhile, Elle reflects on how much she has been dependent on Dakota’s support and believes that her sister has protected her through the ups and downs she has grown up in the spotlight. “Dakota was always there to protect me,” she said.
Dakota also revealed how central Elle’s center is in her sense of security. “El gives me confidence and security in my life,” she said. “If I lose all the friends I have on Earth… if anyone in my life stops talking to me, I will be devastated.
