Elle Fanning is opening up about being sexualized by Hollywood.
The child star revealed during a Hollywood Reporter roundtable interview that she lost out on a comedy role at age 16 over being billed as “unfuckable.”
“I’ve never told this story, but I was trying out for a movie. I didn’t get it. I don’t even think they ever made it, but it was a father-daughter road trip comedy,” Fanning said. “I didn’t hear from my agents because they wouldn’t tell me things like this — that filtration system is really important because there’s probably a lot more damaging comments that they filtered — but this one got to me. I was 16 years old, and a person said, ‘Oh, she didn’t get the father-daughter road trip comedy because she’s unfuckable.’”
“The Great” actress added, “It’s so disgusting. And I can laugh at it now, like, ‘What a disgusting pig!’”
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.”
Of “The Great,” Fanning said, “I am grateful for the show, because I don’t feel I’m fighting against the child actor thing anymore.”
The “Super 8” alum recently shared that she also was not considered for a major franchise role over her social media status. During the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, Fanning said, “I’m not going to say what it was,” Fanning said, “but I didn’t get a part once for something big because — and it might not have just been this reason, but this was all the feedback that I heard — was because I didn’t have enough Instagram followers at the time.”
Elle Fanning most recently joined Timothée Chalamet in the Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown” from Searchlight Pictures, in which she’ll play the folk icon’s early ’60s love interest Sylvie Russo. Besides “The Great,” she was recently seen in Hulu’s “The Girl from Plainville.”
