Dakota Fanning | Behind The Looks | Who What Wear

Hey, who, what, where? I'm Dakota Fanning, and today we're going Behind the Looks

Uptown Girls is, and I think even more so as the years go by, has become like a very comforting movie to a lot of girls and women

I played a character named Ray, and Brittany Murphy, who I loved very dearly, played my nanny

And the costumes for both of our characters were a huge part of telling the story

For her character, it was about the free spirit, kind of childlike playfulness of Molly

And then for Ray, it was kind of the uptight, hypochondriac little girl who was sort of scared of everything in that scene where I do the dance performance

That costume was really special and handmade. It had all these little plastic dars on it and little like crystal like teardrops

It was supposed to signify absorbing some of Britney's character into into my character's spirit

I really do remember the costumes and the experience like it was yesterday, but it was not yesterday

It was a long time ago. My fondest memory of working with Britney

There are too many to count. She was such a gentle, fun person who wanted to make every day special for me

When we, you know, finished shooting and wrapped, like my whole dressing room at the studio was filled with balloons

And she got us like matching Juicy Couture, like track suits with our names on them

Like, she just, every little detail was always, like, how could I make something fun for Dakota

And I just loved her so much and still really, really miss her

I Am Sam was my first movie. I was six and I turned seven

Michelle Pfeiffer was in that movie and now I'm, you know, in a show with her 20 years later, literally to the day

I turned 27 working with her again after having turned seven. working with her the first time. It is such a ever present experience in my life because it sort

of started my career and I wouldn't be where I am today without that experience and the writer and

director Jesse Nelson. And there was a baby dress that you see my character Lucy wearing as a baby

So my character Lucy, at six years old, wears that same baby dress

but it's now worn as a shirt because she's grown and she's taller

I have that dress-slash-shirt in my house framed. It's so little and small

When I think about it I think about like my little self In my first film It very special One of the best costumes that I ever worn was a handmade origami crane Halloween costume

And it was made out of like aluminum foil. One of those homemade things that just like looked so special, you know, it was one of those

Didn't get to keep that, but I might have, I don't know, it was tinfoil after all

I don't know where that ended up, but it was very cute. In The Cat in the Hat, I play Sally, such kind of an iconic book and getting to work with Mike Myers

It was a real world that was created. Bo Welch was the director

He's a, you know, world renowned production designer. And so he was very invested in the look of the film and like the color palette

Like everything is pretty much like purple, green, orange or yellow, you know, like that's sort of

And then and then the cat, you know, is black, white and red

And so it was kind of all about contrast and creating Cat in the Hat land

And I wore that costume every single day for almost seven months

But the character Sally, like, you go through different things. So sometimes it would have, like, purple, like, slime on it

Or it would be, like, kind of dirty. But, you know, in the Cat in the Hat land, like, you're perfect in the next scene

You know, you walk through some magic door and you're back to your perfect self

So there were different versions of that look that were, that fit whatever circumstances the characters had found themselves in

Girlfriends who I met like later in my life in high school and they were like, when I was little, all I wanted was your costume from the cat in the hat

Coraline is, I think, maybe one of my most beloved films I've ever done by a lot of people

the way that animation is done is it's all the world is built and the models they're moved a

couple times of a second to put it all together um so a little model did wear my Coraline costume

and I do have a model of Coraline in a glass box in another room in my house so we're seeing a

pattern here I voiced the character of Coraline over a period of like five or six years because

I started doing it when I was like nine, and I think it came out when I was about to turn like 15

At one point, like my voice was like kind of had changed a little bit

and I had to sort of go back to like a younger, like pitch my voice up a little bit to be younger

Coraline is also has an iconic look, having the kind of black hair that's like the blue black hair

And then, of course, the changes from like the eyes to the button eyes and that, you know

being a big part of the film, getting your eyes so shut

and have buttons put on your eyes. And her yellow raincoat, you know

she lives in like a wet place. It an iconic wardrobe for an animated but not really animated It hard to describe what Coraline is Oh yeah

Yes, Twilight. I was in three of the Twilight films. I played Jane, one of the Volturi vampires

The costume over the course of the three films would change slightly

but the Volturi represent a very, you know, kind of dark, sinister sect of vampire

And so I think that the costumes were meant to be kind of menacing and very cloaky and high neck

and lots of capes and boots that buttoned all the way up to the knee and sort of baroque in a way

You know, they're kind of stuck in an old Italian mausoleum type place

And they don't leave very often. I also had like the Volturi like crest necklace that we always wore

But no, I mean, listen, I don't think you can get further away from who I am or any other character than playing a vampire

So it was fun to kind of dive into the super pale, pale skin and of course the red contact lenses and kind of playing up the creepiness

And I've seen some Halloween costumes of people dressed up as Jane, and that's always funny to see

The Runaways, I played Cherie Curry, the lead singer of The Runaways

We got to recreate some really iconic looks of hers. The white corset, of course, when she performs Cherry Bomb, the fishnets

And Cherie was a young girl in a sort of man's world and man's industry

And the way that she took ownership of her power was to shock and surprise

even wear something that might make somebody uncomfortable. And that was kind of how she survived that sort of tough rock and roll scene

It was also exciting to get to play with that kind of crazy 70s makeup and glam rock stuff and the costumes

And I actually got to keep all the wardrobe from that film, so I have it

The Alienist, Sarah Howard, in the first season, she's not a detective yet, but she is a detective in the second season

So Detective Sarah Howard, you know, a huge part of The Alienist was the world, the costumes, the sets

you know really transporting the cast and the crew back to that time and then of course you know

hopefully transporting the audience watching it um for the first season the costume designer was

michael kaplan who was like you know a genius and has done so many costumes that when people think

of movies they think of some of his costumes and for the second season rudy mance who has worked with michael a lot he was the costume designer so it was great It was like didn feel like a huge shift They had the same eye for detail and the same sensibilities

And Michael kind of led the way for Rudy to take over when we did the series of the second book

If there were 70 buttons on my jacket, they weren't facades with snaps underneath

They were, unfortunately some days, really 70 buttons. But I got very good at knowing what I could take off when

I'm like, are you going to see this in this shot? Nope, okay, I can take these off. You know what I mean

Like, oh, I'm going to take certain pieces off. And then at the end of the day, on series like that

the person who kind of gets you dressed and helps you get undressed in the morning and the night time is so important

You become so close with them. And so I had two wonderful women for each time

And I would, they would say I was done and I would be kind of disrobing as I'm walking back to my trailer to get changed

And Dora would be behind kind of, you know, I'd be like, oh, here, we can take this off

I can take this off. I would do everything aside from like what I needed to keep on to not be naked in front of everybody

But it was like really hot in Budapest, Hungary. And so it would be rough some days

Some days were hard, but most days were great. And it was always wonderful to see the different outfits

The first lady. I play Susan Ford, the youngest child and only daughter of President Gerald Ford and his wife, Betty Ford

So excited about the project and to be working with Michelle and to recreate the mother-daughter bond between Betty and Susan

I think it was a very formative relationship in Betty's life. And as I said about I Am Sam, working with Michelle has been such a formative experience in my life

And getting to know her as an adult and spend, you know, off time with her as well was such a dream

We became very close and she's just the best. The costume designer scene, the looks are to a T some photos of the Ford family

Like every detail she recreated. I'm so, so excited to see it in its entirety and to see the other women's stories. The show was filmed in three separate blocks. So Betty was first. So Michelle and I were filming first. And then it was Viola's Michelle Obama block and then Jillian's Eleanor Roosevelt block at the end

And so, you know, there's so much of the show that the people in the other blocks don't get to see

So I can't wait to see it all woven together and see the great, great women behind, you know, the great men

Thank you