commentary
In “Sentimental Value” and “Predator: Badlands,” Fanning showed off a singular, dynamic range few others could
Published
January 24, 2026 1:30PM (EST)
Elle Fanning at the 83rd Annual Golden Globes on January 11, 2026 in Beverly Hills, California. (Christopher Polk/2026GG/Penske Media via Getty Images)
Versatility is an actor’s bread and butter. If a performer walks into an audition, they’ve got to be ready to read the lines however the script supervisor and director see fit. Do it again, but this time with a little more grit. Give us emotion. Give us anger. Give us power. Actors have to be ready to adjust at a moment’s notice. Flexibility is the name of the game, second only to talent.
But versatility is also a lost art — collateral damage during the construction of the pipeline that directly funnels social media stars to the screen. In the age of self-tape auditions and Instagram industry connections, an actor’s artistic elasticity is deprioritized. What so often matters most these days is the size of an actor’s following or which established person can vouch for them. That’s also why, if you notice that an actor tends to play one type of role, it’s worth googling whether they have famous relatives.
Fanning’s turn in “Predator: Badlands” would be striking as it is, but examined alongside “Sentimental Value,” the two films display the kind of dynamism and artistic range that viewers seldom get to see on-screen, let alone in the same month.
Already in her still relatively short career, Elle Fanning has managed to position herself smack dab in the center of these two polarities, the perfect combination of classic Hollywood and new age celebrity. Fanning — who scored her first Oscar nomination this week for a small but critical role in “Sentimental Value” — is the kind of movie star with an almost vintage appeal: versatile, surprising and compulsively watchable. She also had a familial connection to snag a spot on industry “ones to watch” lists since she was a child. In the early 2000s, Fanning was cast as the younger version or sibling of her sister Dakota Fanning’s film characters, until the junior Fanning eventually broke out on her own with a wise-beyond-her-years performance in Sofia Coppola’s 2010 film, “Somewhere.” Coppola’s film put Fanning on the map, and she’s been turning in extremely varied and delightfully unpredictable performances in movies and television ever since.
(Kasper Tuxen Andersen/Neon) Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas as Agnes Borg Pettersen and Elle Fanning as Rachel Kemp in “Sentimental Value”
As esteemed as Fanning is, 2025 proved to be a watershed year in her impressive career. The same month “Sentimental Value” opened stateside, Fanning was headlining theater marquees in “Predator: Badlands,” a spinoff in the long-running sci-fi franchise, playing dual roles as the neurotic synthetic cyborg, Thia, and her nefarious robo-sibling, Tessa. The film demanded a full range of character work from Fanning,