List of Elle Fanning performances

Elle Fanning is an American actress known for her roles on stage and screen. She started her career as a child actor in 2001 before transitioning to mature leading roles. She has acted across genres ranging from Hollywood blockbusters to Independent dramas.

Fanning made her film debut in the child custody drama I Am Sam (2001), before taking roles in the family comedy Daddy Day Care (2003), the family comedy-drama Because of Winn-Dixie (2005), the psychological drama Babel (2006), and the fantasy romance drama The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). She was able to transition into leading roles acting in the Sofia Coppola drama Somewhere (2010), the J.J. Abrams science-fiction thriller Super 8 (2011) and the Sally Potter the coming-of-age drama Ginger & Rosa (2012). She then gained a wider audience portraying Princess Aurora in the Walt Disney Studio fantasy film Maleficent (2014) and its sequel Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019).

She has focused her career on independent films such as the historical drama Trumbo (2015), the psychological horror film The Neon Demon (2016), the coming-of-age dramedy 20th Century Women (2016), the science-fiction romance How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2017), the Southern Gothic thriller The Beguiled (2017), the gangster drama Live by Night (2019), the musical drama Teen Spirit (2018), the romantic comedy A Rainy Day in New York (2019), and the teen romance All the Bright Places (2020), the later of which she also served as a producer. She portrayed Mary Shelley in the period drama Mary Shelley (2017), and Sylvie Russo in the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown (2024).

On television, she portrayed Catherine the Great in the FX on Hulu satirical period dramedy The Great (2020–2023) and Michelle Carter in the Hulu crime miniseries The Girl from Plainville (2022). She also acted in the supernatural miniseries The Lost Room (2006). On stage, she made her Broadway playing a hippie in the Branden Jacobs-Jenkins family drama play Appropriate (2023) and portrayed the character Tomorrow in the video-game Death Stranding 2: On the Beach (2025).