All About Elle and Dakota Fanning’s Close Sister Relationship

Both Elle Fanning and Dakota Fanning seem to have grown up on camera, making them very familiar faces in Hollywood. Dakota, now 31 years old, began making appearances on television in the early 2000s, before she was cast in the film I Am Sam in 2001. She went on to star in War of the Worlds, Coraline, Uptown Girls, The Runaways, and several Twilight films.

Though she was the little sister, 26-year-old Elle started performing around the same time as Dakota, even playing a 2-year-old version of her character in I Am Sam. She has since starred in Maleficent, Mary Shelley, A Complete Unknown, and the popular Hulu show The Great.

Though sibling relationships can be competitive, it seems as though the Fannings have been nothing but supportive of one another. They have even started successfully collaborating, forming their production company, Lewellen Pictures, in 2021 and subsequently signing a first look deal with Civic Center Media and MRC Television.

“We are thrilled to be launching this company together,” they said in a joint statement at the time. “Our goal is to tell stories, through comedy and drama, which are authentic to the human experience, and not just from our own perspective.”

Fans are interested in their sisterly dynamic behind the business partnership, so here is everything about Dakota, Elle, and their close relationship.

The two sister are originally from Conyers, Georgia. According to a 2010 profile of Elle in New York Times Magazine, the family split their time between there and California, before moving to Los Angeles when Dakota began appearing in more projects around the age of six. They definitely seem to feel connected to the South through their family history and upbringing, however. In 2016, Dakota shared more about that while speaking to Town & Country.

“I was raised by very traditional Southern parents with Southern manners,” she shared. “You don’t air your dirty laundry to people that aren’t your family or your friends. Why would I ever want to portray myself as anything other than together?”

In 2020, Elle explained some Georgia colloquialisms in an interview with Vanity Fair, sharing she says “fall” instead of “autumn,” and that “pretty as a peach” is a high compliment. Also, all “tea” in Georgia is supposedly sweet tea, and her grandmother’s tea is excellent. The actress is a huge fan of Waffle House, otherwise known to her as “the best restaurant in the world.”

The family actually has a long history, with records on Ancestry.com connecting them to royalty through their mother, Heather Joy Arrington. They are the 22nd great-granddaughters of King Edward III, according to a post from People in 2014. This makes them very distantly related to Kate Middleton, the current Princess of Wales. Her mother, Carole Middleton, is a great-granddaughter of Edward III as well, making Kate 21st cousins to Elle and Dakota.

In 2018, while speaking at a panel at the Sundance Film Festival to promote her show The Alienist, Dakota described the beginning of her career as “coincidental.”

“It all started so coincidentally for me,” she said. “I did this commercial, and I had a good time so I did another one, then I did a TV show which turned into a movie and then I was an actor all of a sudden. I wasn’t a kid that was like, ‘I want to be in the movies.’”

Dakota continued, “I just liked to play around the house and make up scenarios, and my mom kind of noticed that I was disinterested in all of the lessons she put me in. I just wanted to play at home so she put me in a drama camp to see if I liked doing that.”

Elle told Porter in 2019 that she and her sister enjoyed performing at home before they were ever in front of the camera.

“My sister and I would play these elaborate scenes around the house,” Elle explained. “Like birthing scenes. I would be the baby, coming out. Crazy stuff like that.”

They did have some different interests: Elle said she was into singing and dancing, to Dakota’s annoyance.

“My sister would yell at me to shut up ’cause I was singing all the time, too loud,” she joked. “I had this hyper, like, ‘Whoo, I gotta go-go-go’ personality, you know? I still do.”

In 2019, the pair announced that they planned to play sisters in an adaptation of the novel, The Nightingale. Elle told Porter in 2022 that it was their first time acting together in this way, so they wanted to do it right.

“It’s a very rare and special thing that we both do this,” she said. “We can’t have the first time over again, so we want it to be the right thing.”

But production was delayed due to COVID-19, and it did not receive a release date. While on the podcast Happy Sad Confused in 2023, Elle told host Josh Horowitz that the project might be “coming back around,” and that they both love the script. She also said they now get offered a lot of stories about sisters.

“There’s something in the air where all the creatives have the one idea at the same time and I feel like now lots of sister things are coming to us,” she said. “We’re like, ‘We can’t just work together now on everything!’ But we did also think it kind of might be really fun to do different sister stories always. But we have to do the first one first.”

When their production company was announced, Deadline reported they would develop not only films, but television shows as well, and that they had begun work on a TV adaptation of Megan Miranda’s novel The Last House Guest. In 2022, they produced the Hulu miniseries The Girl from Plainville, starring Elle as Michelle Carter. The series was based on the true story of a woman convicted of involuntary manslaughter after her boyfriend died by suicide at her urging.

In April 2023, Lewellen Pictures started work on a docuseries for Hulu called Mastermind, about nurse and FBI consultant Dr. Ann Burgess. That same year, The Hollywood Reporter announced they would be working on a TV show about Paris Hilton.

“All we did was play Simple Life growing up,” Elle quipped. “Dakota was Paris, and I was always Nicole.”

For Elle’s birthday in 2024, Dakota wrote a gushing tribute to her sister, sharing in an Instagram post, “The best thing that has ever happened to me is being given Elle as my sister. With every passing year, my gratitude for her deepens, even when it feels like that couldn’t be possible. She is magic, and I’m so lucky that she is mine.”

For Dakota’s birthday in February 2025, Elle called her “my favorite person in the world.”

For Dakota’s big 30th birthday in 2025, Elle had a bit more to say, writing, “I could sit and listen to you talk for hours, in fact that is my favorite place to be…absorbing your advice, your fascinating view of the world...I have always felt safest with you by my side. She is the epitome of what a big sister should be. She’s absolutely nuts😂but will fight for her friends till the bitter end. I love you I love you I love you.”

In 2019, while talking to Shape, Dakota said, “My sister, Elle, and I are really close. We always have been. We’re very different, but we’re very connected. We don’t talk every day, but we don’t have to. We just have that special bond."

She added, “There’s no one I want to succeed more in this business than my sister, and I know she wants the same for me.”