Dakota Fanning on Working with Sister Elle for First Time & Not Being Bossy (Exclusive)

A quiet chilly night by the fire turns into a living, breathing nightmare for Dakota Fanning in her terrifying new horror film “Vicious.” 

She talks to “Extra” about the movie, saying, “The character that I play, Polly, receives a package from a mysterious visitor, and chaos ensues. I think it's really a pure horror film, and then at its center it's like a story of this woman who's in this psychological battle within herself, with her own thoughts, with her own mind.”

Dakota was inspired from within for her performance, saying, “I once had this really lucid dream that when I woke up in the morning, I for five minutes didn't know if the dream had really happened or not, like, genuinely. And I was like, ‘I've lost my mind.’ And I think that's sort of the place that we're meeting Polly at. And it just kind of goes from there.”

She confessed the role was “emotionally taxing,” explaining, “You're crying for 12 hours a day pretty much most of the time, but I've always been an actor that's had to like dip in and out. Like, I can't hold it for a whole day, you know, like, I have to be able to laugh.”

Fanning said, “Unwinding at the end of the day was super important.”

“There's no better feeling than being done at the end of the day and then going home,” Dakota said. “And for me, it's, like, getting in the bathtub and then watching my shows on my iPad in the bed. Then you just like wait for that moment and it's so nice.”

Plus, she dished on getting ready to work with sister Elle Fanning for the first time on the movie adaptation of the best-selling WWII novel “The Nightingale.” 

They are heading to Europe for the project. Dakota shared, “I am just looking forward to the experience as a whole, on-set and off-set. Like,we've been talking lately about, ‘Are we going to live together when we make the movie? Like, is that healthy?’ It wouldn’t be, but then we're also like, ‘It'd be so weird not to.’”

As for working together, she said, “It's almost like we're sharing that last little piece of ourselves with each other of how we are on a set and how we are as actors and getting to share that with each other… So, I think we'll be totally unbreakable after.”

Dakota laughed, saying, “I have to already work on not being a bossy older sister on set. I've already been thinking about that. I have to treat her like I would treat anyone else.”