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Actress turns down second major role in eight weeks claiming wardrobe and New Mexico issues

HOLLYWOOD, CALIF. – APRIL 16, 2008 – Dakota Fanning has walked out in the middle of negotiations that would have landed her the starring role in the newest screen version of Lolita, a film based on the novel by Vladimir Nabokov. Dakota made the announcement Friday at a press conference in Hollywood.

“We went over and over the script, me and my mom, and although it was a very heavy role with many adult themes, I felt I was ready for it,” Dakota told a packed room of reporters at the Marquee Convention Center and Bowling Alley. “It wasn’t too ‘grown-up,’ like some people have said. Lolita in the movie is younger than me, so I know I could have done a great job. If I could pull off Hounddog, just imagine what I could have done with a girl who wants to do all that stuff.”

Ten seconds of silence followed as reporters, presumably, imagined.

“Or basically wants to, depending on how you interpret the script,” Dakota said.

This will be the third take on Nabokov’s clbumic 1955 novel, which is the story of a 45-year-old European gentleman, Humbert Humbert, who becomes sexually obsessed with a 12-year-old girl named Dolores, whom he calls Lolita. Humbert bribes Dolores for sexual favors; Dolores uses him until she finds a way to escape. Humbert loses touch with her for several years and sees her next when she is 17 and pregnant, asking him for money. The new film is being produced by indie film company BroadStreet Entertainment of Greenwich Village, N.Y.

Dakota could play the role, but . . .

No one doubts that Dakota, 14, could have aced the supremely difficult role of the flirtatious yet tragic Lolita that neither Sue Lyon nor Dominique Swain in the 1962 and 1997 versions of the film managed to fully express.

“But then (the production staff) sent over the wardrobe outlines, and I realized there were going to be a few problems,” Dakota said. “Like for instance, they wanted me to wear these red, heart-shaped sunglbumes. I don’t look good in red anywhere from the middle of my chest up, especially in the summer, which is when the majority of filming would take place. Red clashes with my natural eye color.”

Dakota also was unhappy with the style of dresses that her character in the film would be required to wear.

“I realize the story’s set in the fifties, but seriously – can you see me in poodle skirts and saddle shoes?” Dakota said. “I was hoping for something with denim, and maybe some dark shades of lace, you know, something that could be tailored to give me a unique look. I talked with the script manager, but he wouldn’t budge.”

Yet even with these catastrophes, Dakota said she was “keeping open on it, because they wanted to pay me a little over five million for the role, which is two million more than I usually make.”

Dakota and New Mexico don’t get along

Then she learned of a last-minute decision by BroadStreet CEO Jimmy Stubblefield to shoot the bulk of the location scenes in New Mexico.

“I don’t do New Mexico,” Dakota said flatly.

A reporter asked her why.

“Because it’s nasty. Because there’s all kinds of bugs and crawling things and cactus and rattlesnakes, and weird people hanging out in front of gas stations, just sitting there trying to figure out where it all went.”

Dakota’s agent, Nan Slater, stepped up to the microphone. “We have nothing against New Mexico . . .” she began.

“You don’t,” Dakota said quietly.

Slater said, “Dakota had a bad experience there last year. We were traveling through the state on the way to Aspen and stopped to eat in a small town called Raton. For Dakota, it was like stepping off into another world.”

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“That’s putting it mildly,” Dakota said. “All I saw was these trailers on blocks and pit bulls eating each other and kids running around all over the place in diapers. And this one woman with a third arm sticking out the side of her head, dragging her leg behind her like it was a croquet mallet.”

“That wasn’t her arm,” Slater reminded Dakota. “She was carrying a young child.”

“I was running too fast to notice,” Dakota said.

A reporter from a Las Cruces, N.M., newspaper asked Dakota if she stopped anywhere else in the state.

“We stopped in Taos to go to the bathroom, and some drunk Indian tried to talk me into investing in a casino. But what was really interesting – after we got out of Raton and got into Colorado, everything was fine. We stopped at this really neat Starbucks in a city called Trinidad, and I met a girl who works there who looks exactly like Avril Lavigne. She knew who I was, naturally, and she gave me extra shots for free.”

Elle followed in Dakota’s footsteps

Another reporter brought up the fact that in February, both Dakota and her sister, Elle, 9 at the time, pulled out of starring roles in My Sister’s Keeper, a film based on the novel by Jodi Picoult and slated for release in 2009. Dakota was to play a teenager with leukemia whose younger sister (Elle) is expected to donate one of her kidneys to save the older sister’s life.

“The two situations are totally unrelated,” Dakota said. “For that one, they wanted me shave my head bald! I would rather go back to Raton than cut my hair. Elle left the film with me, because she goes where I go.”

Just hours after Dakota walked out on My Sister’s Keeper, she became the target of harsh criticism in the online press. Mollygood.com wrote that Dakota, “whose spiteful eyes are second only to her spiteful grin in severity, has reportedly already learned to be a vain diva, and her younger sister, Elle, is following suit,” and, “Add this to our acgreat timesulating pile of evidence that Dakota Fanning has the mark of the beast somewhere on her body.”

Marks of beasts notwithstanding, Cinematica.com chimed in with, “I guess she thought they’d fit one of those bald caps on her head, or she’d be the lucky cancer victim who miraculously doesn’t lose her hair.”

After the press conference, Dakota was asked if she had her eyes on any other challenging roles in the near future. She said she currently has five films either in pre- or post-production, or completed, but won’t be ready to look at new offers until late August.

Will Elle star in The Exorcist?

“Right now I’m in the middle of preparing for the National Scrabble Championships in July, so I’m going to focus all my energy on that,” she said. “But Elle is being considered to play ‘Regan’ in a remake of The Exorcist.

Immediately someone suggested a role of that magnitude might be a stretch for 10-year-old Elle. “Believe me, it’s no stretch,” Dakota said. “She could do half those scenes right now without any rehearsal.”