Sofia Coppola, David Fincher, J.J. Abrams, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Sally Potter, Cameron Crowe, Nicolas Winding Refn… at the ripe old age of 19, Georgia-born actress Elle Fanning has the kind of CV that makes Jennifer Lawrence and Saoirse Ronan look like late bloomers, and she’s only just getting started. “I’ve got a lot of room to grow, and a lot more characters to explore,” Fanning says with a smile that could stop a 747, shoulder-length blonde hair swaying in the wind as she shares a sofa with TF on the fancy rooftop terrace of a Cannes hotel. “There are so many different people in the world, not even people – aliens. So many beings and souls to explore.”

Fanning has the extraterrestrial on her mind as she’s in Cannes for the premiere of John Cameron Mitchell’s certifiable comedy romance How To Talk To Girls At Parties, in which she stars as Zan, an alien who runs away with a human boy to experience the punk subculture of ’70s Croydon. In two days she’ll be walking the red carpet again for The Beguiled, Sofia Coppola’s sexually charged Deep South drama, in which Fanning plays a hormonal young woman who pines after Colin Farrell’s wounded soldier. As far as film projects go, they’re polar opposites, and that’s how Fanning likes it. “Even last year, with The Neon Demon, it was a very different film for some people,” she says, with another flash of that cherubic smile. “And that’s what I try to do – pick as different parts as I can.”