Dakota [Fanning] made her debut at the age of four, in a small playhouse in her hometown of Conyers, Georgia, a leafy city 25 miles from Atlanta. Two years later, she was working with Sean Penn. Now she makes a reported $3 million per film. That's as close to a Cinderella story as it gets. "It was just this one-week thing," she says of her first performance, "and we did the play in front of our parents at the end of the week. It was The Rainbow Fish. I was the little blue fish who wanted one of his scales, and the rainbow fish yelled at me. I used to play around the house and do things like that, so it didn't feel any different from when I did it by myself at home. It still feels like I'm playacting at home, but in front of a camera. The head of the playhouse talked to my mom and said I should get an agent in Atlanta. I got a Tide commercial and then I did a Georgia Lottery commercial with Ray Charles. I sat on the piano with him while he played 'Georgia on My Mind.' I said, 'Is that Beethoven?' and he said, 'That's pure Charles, little lady. What do you know about Beethoven?'" She didn't imitate Ray Charles, exactly, but she did morph into him for a moment there. It was a little scary.
Sources
Vanity Fair, Jan 2007, p. 114
