Add Elle Fanning to the list of young stars who survived teenage hypersexualization in the media.
“The Great” star, 25, got candid during the Hollywood Reporter’s Comedy Actress Roundtable interview recently, recalling how she lost out on a role because she wasn’t sexually attractive enough to casting directors when she was just 16 years old — for a “father-daughter road trip comedy,” no less.
Fanning explained how her team had to “filter” explicit comments that people had said of her audition.
“I was 16 years old, and a person said, ‘Oh, she didn’t get the father-daughter road trip comedy because she’s unf – – kable.'”
Elle Fanning first burst into Hollywood as a toddler with her role in 2001’s “I Am Sam” — playing the younger version of her older sister, Dakota Fanning’s character.Tim Regas / MEGA “It [was] so disgusting. And I can laugh at it now, like, ‘What a disgusting pig!'” the actress said of her reaction at the time.
Fanning continued, “I was always immensely confident, but of course, you’re growing up in the public eye, and it’s weird.”
“I’ll look at paparazzi photos from when I was 12 and think, ‘Is that a good thing to see such a mirror of yourself at that age?’ I don’t feel like it damaged me, but it definitely made me very aware of myself,” she lamented.
The former child star is the younger sister of actress Dakota Fanning, 29 — both of whom have matured into young women under the close watch of the public eye.
Fanning also disclosed that she felt “very protected” as a kid in Tinseltown, thanks to a strong team.
“I have an amazing manager and agent who’ve been with me since I was 8 or 9, same people,” she gushed.
The “Girl From Plainville” star didn’t get a part in a father-daughter comedy when she was 16 years old due to her appearance as not being screwable. The Post has reached out to Fanning’s camp for comment.
