Elle is this week’s cover of Madame Figaro! She had been featured in the magazine recently on a spread about The Beguiled and Cannes Film Festival, and now she’s sneaked her way into their cover. They have released what seems to be the entire article about Elle on their website, but, naturally, it’s in french. Anyway, we’ve updated our gallery with the two covers, as well as a couple of images from the photoshoot.

Elle is next month’s VOGUE cover girl! She was photographed by Annie Leibovitz and the story was written by Nathan Heller, who accompanied her on a haunted tour of New Orlean’s French Quarter. The entire article is very entertaining, specially when it describes certain traits of Elle’s personality we have grown fond of, such as her old soul manners and her confusion when it comes to technology. The story also features a video called “Elle Fanning’s fan fantasy”, which is basically your pun dream come true. Our gallery has been updated with the issue’s cover, as well as the photoshoot and screen captures from the featured video.

You can tell the story of Elle Fanning through the things she does, but also through the things she does not do. Fanning would rather not sit still, for instance. She does not tweet. She does not learn her lines until the night before she shoots them (then she memorizes them in the bath) and does not watch her own talk-show appearances (“It’s like hearing your voice on an answering machine”). She does not appreciate it when the paparazzi trail her to the gym, because she thinks she’s not famous enough to merit the commotion. (“The rest of the world is like, ‘Who is that person?’ I’m like, ‘I’m sorry!’ ”) When people now stop Fanning on the street (“Are you——”), she tries not to reply, “Dakota Fanning’s sister!” Fanning, then, would not be the first person—and might actually be the last—to realize what a rare and even spooky star Fanning, at nineteen, has become.

It’s not only the regal beauty—arching eyebrows, snub nose, and a sylphic whoosh of hair—or the growing catalog of impressive work. When I meet Fanning one evening at Tableau, a high-ceilinged restaurant in New Orleans’s French Quarter, what is striking is the outward flexure of her confidence, the way she knows just who she is and wants to pass along such certainty to you.

Read More