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And she’s been that way for 2 months – with Guns ‘N Roses lead singer Axl Rose

BRENTWOOD, CALIF. – JUNE 25, 2008 – It started back in April, amid all the hoopla over the sale of a painting by her sister, Elle, and it sort of got heavy, and kind of got out-of-control, and one thing led to another, and she kept it to herself, and she lived on a little pink Cupid-cloud in her own little world. In other words, she fell in love.

But like most things in 14-year-old Dakota Fanning’s life, love didn’t follow any predictable patterns – unless you count the can’t-eat, can’t-sleep, can’t-think-about-a-whole-lot-else business, which she says she can live with.

“Me and some of my friends were hanging around my house one day,” Dakota says, “and one of them said, ‘You know who you look like?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, me,’ and she said, ‘No,’ and I said, ‘If you say Elle, you’re going home,’ and she goes, ‘No, you look like that Axl Rose guy.’ This particular friend, who I’ll leave nameless, has a lot of personal issues, so I just ignored her. I didn’t even know what an Axl Rose was.”

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But the friend was convinced of the similarity between Dakota’s and Rose’s looks, so to appease the friend, Dakota got permission from her mother, Joy, to go on the Internet. The friend pulled up some photos of Rose, one of the most notorious, hell-raising bad boys in the history of rock music, and one look was all it took.

“I was at a loss for words, if you can believe that, so you know it had to be deep,” Dakota says, throwing her hair back over both shoulders. “I was shocked – not because he looks like me, which he only did a little bit when he was younger, but because he’s soooo cute! Okay, I know he’s like 30 years older than me, but so what?”

Dakota learns about Axl

As soon as all her friends went home, Dakota called her agent, Nan Slater, and said, “Tell me everything you know about Axl Rose.” Slater said, “Who?” Dakota said, “Axl Rose, the Guns ‘N Roses guy.” Slater said, “Why do you want to know about him, Dakota?” Irritated, Dakota said, “Why do you want to keep being my agent, Nan? Or am I mistaken and you’d rather handle some generic talent like Abigail Breslin?”

Slater quickly fed Dakota the following tidbits:

• Axl grew up in Indiana and came to Los Angeles in his early 20’s to become a famous rock star.

• He’s known for wearing skin-tight Spandex shorts, bandanas, leather jackets and hi-top sneakers on stage.

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• He’s now a vegetarian and has quit all of his vices, including alcohol and tobacco, and he meditates and practices yoga every day.

• He lives in a mansion in Malibu.

• He got into trouble in the 80’s over the song “One in a Million,” which included the words “fine upstanding member of societys” and “fabulous persons.”

• He was arrested more than 20 times as a youth for crimes that included public drunkenness and bumault, and authorities in Lafayette, La. wanted to have him locked up as a habitual criminal.

• He was arrested in Stockholm, Sweden in July 2006 over allegations that he bit a security guard.

“I didn’t care about the arrests and the nasty words – the part about the Spandex did it for me,” Dakota says. “I just daydreamed about him all the time. It put me in a fairly unusual state, but that was okay, because my whole family was all nutso about Elle selling a painting for almost three million dollars, so I had a little space to play with it. The infatuation, I mean.”

She began to daydream and nightdream about Axl. Every time she was in a store or at a newsstand, she’d frantically flip through rock magazines, hoping to get a glimpse of him. When visiting friends’ houses, she would get on their computers and read everything she could about the singer.

“He looks a lot different nowadays than when he looked like me, but even with his corn rows and beard, he’s still just awesome,” Dakota says. “He’s just a beautiful person who needs someone to take care of him. Someone around his age, I mean.”

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Dakota hears some Guns ‘N Roses music

Then one of her friends swiped her father’s copy of the Guns ‘N Roses album Use Your Illusion II, and Dakota fell even harder.

“The music just totally spoke to me,” she says. “I never knew music like that even existed, because my mom would never let me listen to it. That song ‘Yesterdays,’ it was like the story of my life: ‘Prayers in my pocket, and no hand in destiny, I’ll keep on movin’ along, with no time to plant my feet.’ That’s exactly how I feel, so obviously there’s a connection between us.”

Dakota says she loved every song on the CD, even Axl’s vitriolic, threatening tirade against Bob Guccione, Jr., fine upstanding member of society Wall and Andy Secher called “Get in the Ring,” but her absolute favorite song, one she just knows was written for her, was “Fourteen Years,” even though the song was released two and a half years before she was born.

“My mind was effectively blown – like it was about to implode,” she says. “It totally sounds like my life. It says, ‘Bull**** and contemplation, gossip’s their trade, if they knew half the real truth, what would they say? Well I’m past the point of concern, it’s time to play, these last four years of madness, sure put me straight.’”

She takes a breath. “You know, with the Hounddog stuff and people saying I’m a has-been and all that. It just makes sense. It’s like destiny. I wonder if he had teeth problems when he was a kid.”

Dakota says she realizes that because of their age difference and “like about twenty other factors that would be fairly important to my mom,” she and Rose, who is 46, could never be a real couple. And she did manage to forget him during the horrific ordeal with Elle last week. But on Monday, when that ordeal seemed to be fully over, she called Slater again and told her to arrange a meeting with Rose.

Dakota and Axl meet

“Nan found out that Axl was doing an appearance the next day – which was yesterday – like the song – at the Tower Records over the hill on the Boulevard, so we had no time to lose. I told her to get me there at all costs. Nan called my mom and said she wanted to take me shopping for some new music. Nan does these things for me because she really wants to keep being my agent. My mom said fine, because she and Elle were still busy working on the upstairs refuse heap, otherwise known as Elle’s new bedroom. Nan picked me up at nine-thirty, and off we went.”

Rose was standing in a corner of the store, talking with several men in suits. Dakota says she recognized him right away “in a joint full of normal people,” and she walked up to him and was about to say something, when she completely blanked.

“I was so nervous, I was about to die,” she says. “I was sweating in places I didn’t even know I had places. So I just stared at him, and he said, ‘Hi,’ and I said, ‘Hi,’ and I just kept staring, and he laughed a little and said, ‘Have we met?’ He said have we met! To me! My heart was all flip-floppy. I said, ‘No, not really,’ and he said, ‘So who are you?’ and I said, ‘I’m Dakota Fanning,’ and he looked me all over – he looked me all over – all over my body! – and he said, ‘So who’s Dakota Fanning?’ He didn’t even know who I am! Can you believe it! Isn’t that awesome?”

One of the men in suits knew who Dakota was, and introductions were made, and it turns out Axl had watched her film Dreamer numerous times and considered it one of his favorites.

“I almost died! He watched it all the time, and he didn’t even know I was in it! He told me he used to watch it all alone in his house in Malibu with all the curtains closed and the doors locked, and he was so depressed he wanted to slit his wrists with the bottom of a Jack Daniel’s bottle – whatever that is – and Dreamer made him feel happy again.”

Dakota takes a big breath and lets it out slowly. “So you see, this is how it works in life. We all help each other in our own ways. Me and Axl talked for about twenty minutes, then he had to go, and that was fine, because I was so perplexed by all these feelings I was having. Me and Nan went to Panda Express, but I was still pretty weird. I’m still weird right now. I guess I’m just weird.”