Dakota Fanning In New Style Modeling: As a sweet child star, Dakota Fanning cuddled farm animals in Charlotte’s Web, battled killer Tripods alongside Tom Cruise in War Of The Worlds and, at the age of 12, endured a brutal rape in Hounddog. Now, in her new movie The Runaways, she has ditched her signature innocence as she struts around the stage in a corset and suspenders, snorts cocaine, pops pills fed to her by Elvis Presley’s granddaughter in a nightclub toilet and shares a steamy girl-on-girl kiss with Twilight actress Kristen Stewart. And she is still only 16 years old.

I am getting older and I wanted to do something I hadn’t done before,’ she says, disingenuously. ‘There are girls in the real world who are the same age as me and have already lived a very full life. Some come through it without a scratch — others get into a mess. ‘I wanted to stand on the sidelines and see, from the perspective of my well-regulated life, what they go through, without getting hurt. ‘For me, it’s acting. It’s the movies. I was comfortable because I can handle all that. For a lot of other girls who haven’t been so lucky, it’s a different story — it’s real and too many can’t handle the way their life turns out.’ But Fanning’s role is based on a real-life character, Cherie Currie, lead singer of The Runaways, one of the seminal rock groups of the Seventies and the world’s first major all-girl rock band.

With their overt sexuality and in-your-face attitude, Currie and fellow teenage band members Joan Jett, Lita Ford, Sandy West and Jackie Fox set about thrilling and scandalising audiences in Britain and in their native America. Fanning’s own life could not have been more different to Currie’s. A star since the age of six, when her career was launched by a brief appearance in a Tide soap powder commercial, her protective middle-class family — tennis player mother, former baseball star father — have kept her on a tight rein, insisting that school comes first, laying down strict rules for her working hours and vetting her team of managers, chaperones and advisers. They were determined that Dakota would never be tempted to join the Brat Pack of spoiled girl stars — from Drew Barrymore to Britney Spears — whose early fame brought personal meltdown. Currie, though, had a chaotic childhood with an alcoholic father and a sick mother.

At 15, a precociously sexy and feisty blonde, albeit emotionally and physically scarred by her upbringing, she joined The Runaways and fell under the spell of a controlling record producer Kim Fowley, portrayed in the film by Michael Shannon.

By the age of 18, she was addicted to drugs and had been used by a range of men. But the band’s success had been immediate, with hits such as Cherry Bomb, Queens Of Noise and Born To Be Bad. The Runaways’ popularity paved the way for girl bands such as The Bangles and The Go-Go’s (featuing Belinda Carlisle) and even solo artists, such as Pink and Courtney Love, cite their influence. But, with the band imploding after just four years, Cherie’s story is a good example of the peaks and perils of the rock ’n’ roll life. Fanning and Kristen Stewart — who both star in the Twilight films — reunited for The Runaways, with Stewart playing Joan Jett, the group’s rhythm guitarist and co-founder. Their lingering on-screen lesbian kiss shocked American audiences, but Fanning shrugs it off.