Successful child actors strike me as enigmas. First of all, I am initially amazed at the parental commitment required once they decide to submit their offspring to such a lucrative yet slightly exploitative career.
Nevertheless, without these bold parents, we would not get to appreciate actor prodigies such as Dakota Fanning, who made her first very dramatic appearance in I Am Sam, wherein she appeared to have an adult’s persona and maturity shrunken into the waif-like body of an eight-year-old.
She then appeared in notable films like Uptown Girls, The Cat in the Hat, Man on Fire, War of the Worlds, Dreamer and Charlotte’s Web. Here’s a nice little recap of all her best work so far: