At fifteen, Dakota Fanning is finally outgrowing the adjective that’s been applied to her so frequently during her decade-long career: precocious. It’s not a bad word, of course, and doubtless there are actresses three times her age who would kill to have worked with Sean Penn, Robert De Niro, Tom Cruise, and Denzel Washington—to say nothing of the prodigious natural talent that got Dakota there. But if her brief turn in this month’s The Twilight Saga: New Moon signals anything, it’s a willingness to shed the self-serious image that—deserved or not—is so widely known it’s been sent up in a Saturday Night Live sketch.

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