Dakota Fanning Auditioned for Kill Bill as a Kid
The actress handwrote a letter to Quentin Tarantino years later, when she was hoping to get a role in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.
When Dakota Fanning first started acting, she tried out for a spot in Quentin Tarantino‘s movie Kill Bill. She auditioned for the role of daughter of the Bride, played by Uma Thurman—and she didn’t end up getting it. But, as the 25-year-old actor explains in this episode of Screen Tests, this exposure to director Tarantino piqued her interest, and the experience stuck with her.
“I love Quentin Tarantino, and I always have. I’m a huge, huge fan of all of his films,” Fanning tells Lynn Hirschberg. “I really wanted to be in a movie directed or written—or written and directed—by Quentin Tarantino. So I wrote a note to Quentin last year at some point to say that I was such a fan, and I told him that little anecdote about Kill Bill. I knew that he was making Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood and I was like, ‘If you ever think that I’m right for something in one of your movies, I would be so thrilled.’ And then a few months later I got a phone call that he wanted me to come in and read with him for Squeaky.”
Fanning says she dyed her hair red and wore brown contact lenses to the table read, and unlike the Kill Bill audition, she nabbed the part. But when she first got to the Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood set, Fanning found it took a second for people to place her.
“I swear to God, no one really knew who I was,” she says with a laugh. “I was walking around there, like, ‘Hey.’ And then I could see them putting it together. I liked getting to surprise people in the role, [being] scary and [having] such a foul mouth and, like, yelling at Brad Pitt. That was crazy.”
To hear more stories from Fanning on the scariest thing she’s done in a film, her first gigs, and nude scenes, watch her Screen Tests interview.
Related: Go Behind the Scenes of W’s Directors Issue with Bong Joon Ho, Noah Baumbach, and Quentin Tarantino
