Elle is on the cover of Teen Vogue’s Special Edition! She talks about her latest movie Teen Spirit, her love for singing and functioning under pressure. A new photoshoot was released along with the issue, and we’ve uploaded it to our photo gallery.

There’s a scene near the end of Elle Fanning’s new movie Teen Spirit where she performs Sigrid’s “Don’t Kill My Vibe” in the finals of a singing competition. Her character, Violet Valenski, the young daughter of a Polish immigrant, sees the contest as a way out of her small town, where her days are spent going to school, working in a restaurant to support herself and her mother, and taking care of her family’s goats and horses.

As Violet belts the song’s chorus, she tears the mic off the stand, throwing herself around onstage like Dua Lipa or Gwen Stefani (who has a song on the soundtrack). Violet puts those years of dancing in her room to “Just a Girl” to good use, eventually rising to the top, where she is confronted with the stakes of her burgeoning fame.

Violet is trying to achieve a lifelong dream, but in the finals, Elle transcends her character, fulfilling her own lifelong dream of being a singer. And as she loses herself in the song, wailing lyrics like “I throw myself from heights that used to scare me” with wild emotion, she’s also, well, us, embodying that hidden part of ourselves that yearns to be seen, to be recognized for what we can do and to be adored for it — and as we encounter success, to maintain some semblance of what made us unique in the first place.

That’s the conflict at the crux of Teen Spirit, a pop movie-musical that follows the introverted-outsider Violet’s journey through the rounds of an American Idol–type singing competition until she makes it to the finals. Written and directed by The Handmaid’s Tale actor Max Minghella, executive-produced by Jamie Bell, and produced by La La Land’s Fred Berger, Teen Spirit is a gritty commentary on what it takes to become a star while retaining some part of your original self.

Elle is aware that this kind of story is captivating for audiences, as evidenced by the number of films with similar arcs, like the aforementioned La La Land and the recent Lady Gaga–led remake of A Star Is Born. See also: Burlesque, Almost Famous, and even one of Elle’s other movies, The Neon Demon, where a young girl becomes a supermodel to terrifying consequences.

“It’s a fairy tale. A girl or boy from a small town enters the big city and has their first experience with stardom,” Elle tells Teen Vogue. “I don’t think people will ever really stop telling that story.”

Surprisingly, Teen Spirit was Elle’s first time really singing in a movie, in an already prolific career filled with indie flicks like How to Talk to Girls at Parties and 20th Century Women, Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled and Somewhere, and big-budget Disney hits like Maleficent, and its sequel slated for release later this year. At first Elle wasn’t considered for the role of Violet; she heard about Teen Spirit from a press release announcing Minghella as the director — not a traditional agent or casting call — and she reached out to set up a meeting.

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Elle attended the “Teen Spirit” special screening in Hollywood last night! She was joined by her sister Dakota Fanning, as well as the movie’s crew. She was wearing Rodarte and L’Oreal Lip Dew.

Elle attended the Miu Miu Twist Launch in Shanghai last night! Elle has been working with Miu Miu since 2014, and she first appeared as the face of the fragrance Twist in January 2019.

Elle is featured on the new issue of The Edit! She is promoting Teen Spirit, and she talked about playing make belief with Dakota as a child, the feeling of rejection that still happens when she auditions, the sequel to Maleficent and more. You can read it all below!

Our gallery has been updated with a new photoshoot that’s featured on the issue, too.

She is an instinctive actor, a playful model, a red-carpet revelation and, as she’s proving in a new film, a seriously impressive singer. But there’s something else about ELLE FANNING, something that makes her almost magically irresistible. JENNIFER DICKINSON meets her to explore the allure

The story of Sleeping Beauty has many variations – some of them rather unsavory, if truth be told (Giambattista Basile, the author of the original tale, was no Walt Disney, let’s put it that way) – but in one of the more PG versions, Princess Aurora is bestowed with magical gifts by the good fairies who managed to secure an invite to her christening. Beauty, predictably, is one of them, but more cheeringly so are courage, sweetness and musicality. It’s the combination of these qualities that makes Elle Fanning’s role in Maleficent, as the fated heroine, one of the best pieces of casting Hollywood has ever seen.

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