Dakota Fanning undoubtedly has one of the most impressive careers in Hollywood. She broke onto the scene at a young age and has continued to wow us with iconic roles throughout her career.
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00:00Hey, who, what, where?
00:01I'm Dakota Fanning, and today we're going Behind the Looks.
00:10Uptown Girls is, and I think even more so as the years go by,
00:15has become a very comforting movie to a lot of girls and women.
00:22I played a character named Ray, and Brittany Murphy,
00:24who I loved very dearly, played my nanny.
00:28And the costumes for both of our characters
00:30were a huge part of telling the story.
00:33For her character, it was about the free spirit,
00:37kind of childlike playfulness of Molly.
00:40And then for Ray, it was kind of the uptight hypochondriac
00:45like little girl who was sort of scared of everything
00:49in that scene where I do the dance performance.
00:52That costume was really special and handmade.
00:54It had all these little plastic dars on it
00:56and little like crystal like tear drops.
01:00It was supposed to signify absorbing some of Brittany's character
01:04into my character's spirit.
01:07I really do remember the costumes and the experience
01:10like it was yesterday, but it was not yesterday.
01:12It was a long time ago.
01:14My fondest memory of working with Brittany,
01:17there are too many to count.
01:18She was such a gentle, fun person who wanted to make every day special for me.
01:28When we, you know, finished shooting and wrapped, like my whole dressing room at the studio
01:34was filled with balloons and filled, like we, and we,
01:37she got us like matching juicy couture, like track suits with our names on them.
01:43Like she just, every, every little detail was always like,
01:47how could I make something fun for Dakota?
01:51And I just loved her so much and still really, really miss her.
01:58I'm Sam was my first movie.
02:00I was six and I turned seven.
02:03Michelle Pfeiffer was in that movie.
02:04And now I'm, you know, in a show with her 20 years later, literally to the day.
02:09I, I turned 27 working with her again,
02:12after having turned seven working with her the first time.
02:15It is such a ever present experience in my life,
02:21because it sort of started my career and I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be where I am today
02:27without, um, you know, that experience and the, the writer and the director, Jesse Nelson.
02:32And there was a baby dress that you see my character Lucy wearing as a baby.
02:38So my character Lucy at six years old, wears that same baby dress,
02:42but it's now worn as a shirt because she's grown and she's taller.
02:46I have that dress slash shirt in my house framed.
02:52It's so little and small.
02:54When I think about it, I think about like my little self in my first film.
02:57It's very special.
02:58One of the best costumes that I've ever worn was a handmade origami crane Halloween costume.
03:05And it was made out of like aluminum foil.
03:08One of those homemade things that just like looked so special, you know, it was one of those.
03:12Didn't get to keep that, but I might've, I don't know, it was, it was tin foil after all.
03:17I don't know where that ended up, but it was very cute.
03:21In the cat in the hat, I play Sally, such kind of an iconic book and, and getting to work with Mike Myers.
03:27It was a real world that was created.
03:31Beau Welch was the director.
03:33He's a, you know, world renowned production designer.
03:37And so he was very invested in the look of the film and like the color palette.
03:42Like everything is pretty much like purple, green, orange, or yellow, you know, like that's sort of, and then, and then the cat, you know, is black, white, and red.
03:50And so it was kind of all about contrast and creating cat in the hat land.
03:55And, um, I wore that costume every single day for almost seven months, but the character Sally, like you go through different things.
04:05So sometimes it would have like purple, like slime on it, or it would be like kind of dirty, but you know, in the cat in the hat land, like you're perfect in the next scene.
04:15You know, you walk through some magic door and you're back to your perfect self.
04:19So there were different versions of that look that were, um, that fit whatever circumstances the characters had, uh, found themselves in.
04:27Girlfriends who I met like later in my life in high school.
04:31And they were like, when I was little, all I wanted was your costume from the cat in the hat.
04:38Coraline is, I think maybe one of my most beloved films I've ever done by a lot of people.
04:46The way that animation is done is it's all, the world is built and the models, they're moved a couple times of a second to put it all together.
04:56Um, so a little model did wear my Coraline costume.
04:59And I do have a model of Coraline in a glass box in another room in my house.
05:05So we're, we're seeing a pattern here.
05:07I voiced the character of Coraline over a period of like five or six years.
05:12Cause I started doing it when I was like nine and I think it came out when I was about to turn like 15.
05:18At one point, like my voice was like, kind of had changed a little bit.
05:22And I had to sort of go back to like a younger, like pitch my voice up a little bit to be younger.
05:28Coraline is also has an iconic look, having the kind of black hair that's like the blue black hair.
05:35And then of course the changes from like the eyes to the button eyes and that, you know,
05:41being a big part of the film, getting your eyes so shut and have buttons put on your eyes.
05:47And her yellow raincoat, you know, she lives in like a wet place.
05:51It's, it's a, it's an iconic, uh, iconic wardrobe for an animated, but not really animated.
05:59It's like hard to describe what, what Coraline is.
06:03Oh yeah.
06:05Yes.
06:06Twilight.
06:07I was in three of the Twilight films.
06:09I played Jane, one of the Volturi vampires, the costume over the course of the three films would change
06:19slightly, but the Volturi represent a very, you know, kind of dark sinister sect of vampire.
06:27And so I think that the costumes were meant to be kind of menacing and very
06:32cloak-y and high neck and lots of capes and boots that buttoned all the way up to the knee and,
06:39and, uh, sort of baroque in a way, you know, they're kind of stuck in a old Italian
06:46mausoleum type place.
06:48Um, and they don't leave very often.
06:50I also had like the Volturi, like crest necklace that we always wore.
06:55But no, I mean, listen, I don't think you can get further away from who I am or any other
07:01character than, than playing a vampire.
07:05Um, so it was fun to kind of dive into the super pale, pale skin and of course the red
07:11contact lenses and, and kind of playing up the, the creepiness.
07:17And I did, I've seen some Halloween costumes of people dressed up as Jane,
07:20and that's always like funny to see.
07:23The Runaways,
07:24I played Cherie Curry, the lead singer of The Runaways.
07:30We got to recreate some really iconic looks of hers.
07:35The white corset, of course, when she performs Cherry Bomb, The Fishnets.
07:39And Cherie was a young girl in a sort of man's world and man's industry.
07:47And she, the way that she took ownership of her power was to, to shock and surprise.
07:53Even wear something that might make somebody uncomfortable.
07:56And, and that was kind of how she survived that sort of tough, tough rock and roll scene.
08:02It was also exciting to get to play with that kind of crazy 70s makeup and, and glam rock stuff.
08:09And, and the costumes.
08:10And I actually got to keep all the wardrobe from that film.
08:13So I, I have it.
08:15The Alienist, Sarah Howard in the first season, she's not a detective yet,
08:20but she is a detective in the second season.
08:22So Detective Sarah Howard, um, you know, a huge part of the Alienist was the world,
08:28the costumes, the sets, you know, really transporting the cast and the crew back to that time.
08:36And then of course, you know, hopefully transporting the audience watching it.
08:40For the first season, the costume designer was Michael Kaplan, who was like, you know,
08:45a genius and has done so many costumes that when people think of movies,
08:50they think of some of his costumes.
08:52And for the second season, Rudy Mance, who has worked with Michael a lot,
08:55he was the costume designer.
08:56So it was great.
08:57It was like, didn't feel like a huge shift.
08:59They have the same eye for detail and the same sensibilities.
09:02And Michael kind of led the way for Rudy to take over when we did the, the series of the second book.
09:08If there were 70 buttons on my jacket, they weren't facades with snaps underneath.
09:17They were unfortunately some days really 70 buttons.
09:23But I got very good at knowing what I could take off when.
09:27I'm like, are you going to see, are you going to see this in this shot?
09:29Nope. Okay.
09:30I can take these off early.
09:31You know what I mean?
09:31Like, oh, I take certain pieces off.
09:33And then at the end of the day, on, on, on series like that, the person who kind of gets you dressed
09:39and helps you get undressed in the morning and the night time is so important.
09:42You become so close with them.
09:44And so I had two wonderful women for each time and I would, they would say I was done
09:49and I would be kind of disrobing as I'm walking back to my trailer, um, to get changed.
09:55And Dora would be behind kind of, you know, I'd be like, oh, here, we can take this off.
10:00I would do everything aside from like what I needed to keep on to not be naked in front of everybody.
10:06But it was like really hot in Budapest, Hungary.
10:09And so it would be rough some days.
10:11Some days were hard, um, but most days were great.
10:14And, and it was always wonderful to see the, the different outfits.
10:18The first lady, um, I play Susan Ford, the youngest child and only daughter of
10:25president Gerald Ford and his wife, Betty Ford.
10:29So excited about the project and to be working with Michelle
10:32and to recreate the mother daughter bond between Betty and Susan.
10:36I think it was a very formative relationship in Betty's life.
10:40And as I said about I am Sam working with Michelle,
10:44it has been such a formative experience in my life and getting to know her as an adult
10:49and spend, um, you know, off time with her as well was such a dream.
10:54We, we became very close and she's just, she's just the best.
10:58The costume designer scene, the looks are to a T some photos of the Ford family,
11:04like every detail she recreated.
11:07I'm so, so excited to, to see it in its entirety and, and to see the other women's stories.
11:13The show was filmed in three separate blocks.
11:15So, um, Betty was first.
11:17So Michelle and I were filming first and then it was Viola's Michelle Obama block
11:23and, and then Jillian's Eleanor Roosevelt block at the end.
11:26So, um, you know, there's so much of the show that the people in the other blocks
11:30don't get to see.
11:31So I can't wait to see it all, um, woven together and, and see the, the great,
11:38great women behind, you know, the great men.
11:45Okay.