Quotes

Dakota [Fanning, her sister] is my favorite actress.

[on acting] "I love it. I just love how you get to be different people and have different names."

On being cast in The Door in the Floor (2004): "I'm glad they picked me to be Ruth."

On what her favorite scene in Daddy Day Care (2003) is: "Oh I guess jumping in the flowers, and the water scenes, 'cause we got to be in bathing suits and swim in the water, and in the water fountain."

On acting: "What's the best part of a movie? I love to know what my name is. It's just so fun. That's the first thing I ask. It's just fun because you have a different name in every movie."

I would love to work with Marion Cotillard... and my sister! I've never worked with Dakota before in a movie. It'd be so cool to be on screen interacting with each other one day. It will happen, I'm just not sure when.

I would like to be a teenager in the '60s or '70s. It just seemed so free, so cool, just roaming around. We can't really roam around now.

To me, acting is just kind of making believe and dressing up. You put on your costume and walk a certain way and feel your character. Then cut, and you're Elle again.

I used to keep a diary when I was little, but I don't do it anymore because of my perfectionist nature. I was using so much Wite-Out.

I was 4 when I did The Door in the Floor (2004). I don't remember every single thing about it, but I liked the costumes, and they always put my hair in pigtails. In one scene I got to eat grilled cheese and I was so excited.

Watching movies is on my list of things to do when I feel like I have the time to do it. Right now there's so much homework.

[on how avoids being sucked into the industry and stays herself] I'm graduating this year [2016] from a normal high school. I mean I still live with my parents. I don't know, I have such a good family. I think that they would whip me into shape if I did anything! Also, you have to kinda separate... I used to, when I was younger ...I kinda looked at doing films as like someone going to soccer practice or going to play a match in a way because I'm like, alright that's just my extracurricular activity! You know, alright, I just go off and do a movie for a little bit. But once I'm home, I mean, there's that, and you're always thinking of characters and I daydream a lot so I'm like, always in my head in that way. But once you're home, you're home, and you have to separate it. I think that people who just live in that movie world, like non-stop, 24/7, 100 percent, it's like, it's too intense, you can't do that. You kind of step out of it, and like, take out the trash, and like, be normal!

People's obsession with beauty and like, perfection, it can really destroy you. And wanting perfection, it's like, what is perfection, you know? It doesn't exist. Perfect doesn't exist, so you drive yourself crazy wanting it.

[being naked] Personally, I love being naked. I walk around naked, like, all the time. It's a part of life!

[on filming Somewhere (2010) at age 12] I grew seven inches in a year and a half. Even my shoe sizes were getting bigger; by the last scene I had grown out of my sandals.